Monthly Archives: February 2018


Galileo Galilei
February 15 is Galileo Galilei’s birthday. Galileo was an Italian natural philosopher who was the key figure at the beginning of the scientific revolution and made several major contributions to its progress. Before Galileo, science was not considered a profession. Typically, people who did ‘science’ were considered natural philosophers and […]

Today in Science History – February 15 – Galileo Galilei


Julius Nieuwland
February 14 is the birthday of Julius Nieuwland. Nieuwland was a Belgian priest and chemist who discovered the first commercially successful artificial rubber, polychloroprene. This is better known by DuPont’s trademark name, neoprene. Nieuwland discovered he could polymerize acetylene into a rubber-like jelly of divinylacetylene. The story might have ended […]

Today in Science History – February 14 – Julius Nieuwland ...