Category Scientists & Inventions

How did Albert discover vitamin C?

Read on to know how Albert Szent-Gyorgyi found a cure for scurvy, a disease caused by a lack of vitamin C.

In 1928, a Hungarian-born US biochemist, Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, isolated an unknown substance from the adrenal glands of an ox. He named it hexuronic acid.

He soon discovered that hexuronic acid could also be obtained from oranges, lemons and cabbages. One thing common to these three sources was that they were all believed to be rich in vitamin C, a substance no one had been able to isolate till then but which was known to cure scurvy.

It occurred to Szent-Gyorgyi that hexuronic acid and vitamin C might be one and the same thing. He injected hexuronic acid into some guinea pigs that had scurvy, and waited to see what would happen. If hexuronic acid were indeed the same as vitamin C, the guinea pigs would get cured. And that is exactly what happened. The animals recovered from the disease.

He wanted to repeat the experiment but he had run out of hexuronic acid. He had to get some more, but how? It was not easy to come by adrenal glands of oxen, the best source: getting it from lemons and oranges was a laborious process.

He was pondering over the problem at dinnertime when his wife served him freshly ground chilli (paprika) with his food. He had never been fond of paprika but now he looked at it with new interest. He had tested many fruits and vegetables for hexuronic acid, but not paprika. Could it give him the acid he was so desperate to get his hands on?

He took it to his laboratory and tested it for its contents – and it was then that he fell in love with the spice. It was loaded with hexuronic acid!

Within a few weeks, he produced three pounds of pure crystalline hexuronic acid. He fed it to vitamin C deficient guinea pigs and got the same results as earlier the animals recovered from scurvy. There was no difference between hexuronic acid and vitamin C.

 When Szent-Gyorgyi received the Nobel Prize for his work in 1937, ‘Time’ magazine dubbed it the ‘Paprika Prize’.

Picture Credit : Google

Who invented the Trachtenberg system of mathematics?

A system of speed mathematics, it was developed by Jakow Trachtenberg when he spent long years at a concentration camp during WWII

The Trachtenberg system is a system of speed arithmetic. With this system, you can do multiplication, division, addition, subtraction and square root operations very quickly and without a calculator. Multiplication and division can be done without the use of multiplication tables. In order to learn this system, all that you need is the ability to count.

This system was developed by Jakow Trachtenberg (1888-1953), a Russian Jewish mathematician and engineer. Trachtenberg developed his unique system of mathematics when he spent long years at a concentration camp during World War II. He was surrounded by violence, disease and death. But he escaped into a world of his own-a world of numbers, logic and order. He visualised gigantic numbers to be added and he tried calculating mentally. He invented a fool-proof method that would make it possible for even a child to add thousands of numbers together without ever adding a number higher than eleven! He scribbled his theories on whatever bit of paper he could lay his hands on – wrapping paper, old envelopes. German worksheets, etc.

In 1944, he and his wife escaped to Switzerland. There, he perfected his mathematics system.

The first students to whom Trachtenberg taught his system were children especially those who were doing poorly in studies. The results were heartening and successful.

In 1950, he founded the Mathematical Institute in Zurich, where both children and adults were taught the system. The system has been thoroughly tested in Switzerland and is found to increase the self-confidence and general aptitude to study, as the students develop outstanding arithmetic abilities.

It is a fool-proof method that would make it possible for even a child to add thousands of numbers together without ever adding a number higher than eleven.

Picture Credit : Google 

What does Hawking’s final theory reveal about the origin of time?

In 1998, physicist Stephen Hawking asked Belgian cosmologist Thomas Hertog to work with him to develop “a new quantum theory of the Big Bang”. What started as a doctoral project for Hertog turned into an intense collaboration that continued until Hawking’s death in 2018. Their answers to the question of how the Big Bang created conditions so perfect for life is what makes the recent book On the Origin of Time: Stephen Hawking’s Final Theory.

In their quest to rethink cosmology from an observers perspective, they had to adopt the strange rules of quantum mechanics that govern the micro-world of atoms and particles. A property called superposition in quantum mechanics suggests that particles can be in several positions at the same time. Only when observed does it randomly pick a specific location. In addition, quantum mechanics also involves random jumps and fluctuations.

Quantum universe

In a quantum universe, therefore, the past and the future emerge from a number of possibilities by continuous observations. These refer to not just the observations done by us human beings, but even the environment or a single particle can “observe”. All other possibilities become irrelevant once something has been observed.

Hawking and Hertog discovered that looking back at the earliest stages of the universe through a quantum lens gave it a more Darwinian flavour of variation and selection. In this deeper level of meta-evolution, even the laws of physics change and evolve in sync with the universe that is taking shape.

Laws evolve

While cosmologists usually start by assuming initial conditions and the laws that existed at the time of the Big Bang, Hawking and Hertog suggest that the laws themselves are a result of evolution. This means that the specific set of physical laws that govern our universe can only be understood in retrospect.

When reasoning back in time, therefore, evolution focussed towards greater simplicity and lesser structure continues all the way. This forms the crux of their hypothesis, meaning that ultimately even time and physical laws would fade away.

The study of the origin of the universe over the last 100 years or so has been against the backdrop of immutable laws of nature. Hawking and Hertog suggest that it isn’t these laws themselves, but their ability to transmute that dictates terms. If future cosmological observations find evidence of this, Hawking’s final theory might well be his greatest scientific legacy.

Picture Credit : Google 

Why is Vijay P. Bhatkar considered a pioneer in India’s IT industry?

Have you heard of India’s first super computer, Param 8000? It was developed under the leadership of Vijay P. Bhatkar. This happened in the 80s when the U.S denied us a supercomputer. Param 8000 was the second fastest computer at that time.

Bhatkar has been awarded the Padma Bhushan, Padma Shri and Maharashtra Bhushan. He is the initiator of the electronics revolution in our country, and has authored several books and research papers.

He is the founder executive director of Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) and is now developing exascale supercomputing for India. These computers can analyze massive amount of data at unimaginable speed.

Bhatkar has played a key role in forming the Electronics Research and Development Centre (ER&DC) in Thiruvananthapuram, Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Kerala (IIITM-K), the ETH Research Laboratory and International Institute of Information Technology in Pune, Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation, and the India International Multiversity.

Picture Credit : Google 

Moving objects using ultrasound waves

Using artificially engineering materials, researchers achieve contactless manipulation.

Have you heard about ultrasound? As the name suggests, ultrasound corresponds to sound waves with frequencies that are higher than the upper limit of what humans can hear. While we can’t hear it, we still put it to good use, albeit in different ways.

One of the most popular ways, and one that you might have heard of, is to use ultrasound for scans. Ultrasound scans are a procedure whereby high-frequency sound waves are bounced off objects (think organs or bones) to create an image of part of the inside of the body. Commonly used to monitor the health of unborn babies during pregnancy, ultrasound waves are also employed to diagnose medical conditions.

Hands-free movement Researchers from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have now discovered a new method that uses ultrasound waves to move objects. The study was published in Nature Communications early in December.

Even though waves have been shown to move objects before, these objects were typically very small, in the order of millimetres to nanometres. What the researchers of this study were able to achieve was to move bigger objects using ultrasound, backed by the principles of metamaterial physics.

What are metamaterials?

Materials that are engineered artificially to interact with waves such as light and sound are referred to as metamaterials. The researchers placed a metamaterial pattern on the surface of an object, which could then be steered without touches using sound.

The researchers were not only able to move an object forward using this technique, but were also able to pull it back towards the source. Even though the study only serves as a demonstration of a concept, higher frequencies of waves and different materials and object sizes are expected to be tested in the future.

The need to move things is ever-present in many fields of science and engineering, especially robotics. By exploring ultrasound waves to move objects without physical contact, the researchers have provided a new mechanism of contactless manipulation that might prove to be important in the upcoming years.

Picture Credit : Google

Why is E.C.G. Sudarshan considered an outstanding scientist?

E.C.G. Sudarshan was an Indian-American physicist and author. A professor at the University of Texas, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize nine times!

He was born in Kottayam, Kerala. He had his college education in CMS College, Kottayam and Madras Christian College, Chennai. He got his PhD from the University of Rochester.

His most important discovery was the Sudarshan-Glauber quantum representation of light. Glauber was infamously awarded the Nobel Prize for this. According to Sudarshan’s own words, “The 2005 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded for my work, but I wasn’t the one to get it.”

He challenged even Einstein’s theory that nothing can travel faster than light. This is the case of Tachyons, which are hypothetical particles and which travel faster than light. His other discoveries include the quantum Zeno effect, non- invariance groups, positive maps of density matrices and computation.

ECG Sudarshan was awarded the Padma Bhushan, in 1976. He also received the CV Raman Award. The Padma Vibhushan came to him in 2007.

In 2005, when the Physics Nobel Prize was denied to him, there was a hue and cry. Many physicists wrote to the Swedish Academy, to show their protest that Sudarshan was not awarded a share of the Prize.

Though side-lined by the Nobel Prize committee, he kept his humour alive. He was also keen on the Vedanta philosophy and often gave lectures on this.

E.C.G. Sudarshan died on 13 May 2018.

Picture Credit : Google