FOOTPRINTS

Today, Google doodle celebrates, the 23rd birthday of Google, and this video explains the history of google.  Google began in January 1996, as a research project, by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, when they were both PhD students, at Stanford University in California.  The project initially involved an unofficial "third founder", Scott Hassan, the original lead programmer, who wrote much of the code, for the original Google Search engine. But, he left before Google was officially founded as a company. Hassan went on to pursue a career in robotics, and founded the company, Willow Garage, in 2006.  Page and Brin originally nicknamed the new search engine, "BackRub", because, the system checked backlinks, to estimate the importance of a site.  Eventually, they changed the name to Google. The name of the search engine was a play on the word "googol", the number 1, followed by 100 zeros, which was picked to signify, that the search engine was intended to provide l...

Today (18-09-2021), Chile celebrates its  National Day. On 18 September, 1810, Chile’s Primera Junta Nacional de Gobierno , (First National Assembly), made the first step toward independence, sparking the start of the Chilean movement, to becoming a sovereign nation.  Today’s Google Doodle honors Chile’s National Day, or Fiestas Patrias, with a depiction of the South American nation’s official animal, the huemul deer.    Indigenous to the southern Andean regions of Chile and Argentina, the huemul (also known as the South Andean deer) is the rarest mammal found within the Chilean borders. A sighting of one of these elusive creatures in nature, is a rare and special occurrence, but it can always be seen on the Chilean Coat of Arms, alongside its fellow mountain dweller, the Andean condor.  Happy National Day, Chile!  

Michiyo Tsujimura, was born on 17 September, 1888, in Okegawa, Saitama Prefecture, Japan. She spent her early career, teaching science. In 1920, she chased her dream, of becoming a scientific researcher, at Hokkaido Imperial University, where she began to analyze the nutritional properties, of Japanese silkworms.   A few years later, Tsujimura, transferred to Tokyo Imperial University, and began researching the biochemistry of green tea, alongside Dr. Umetaro Suzuki, famed for his discovery of vitamin B1. Their joint research revealed that, green tea contained significant amounts of vitamin C, the first of many, yet unknown molecular compounds in green tea, that awaited under the microscope. In 1929, she isolated catechin, a bitter ingredient of tea. Then, the next year she isolated tannin, an even more bitter compound. These findings formed the foundation for her doctoral thesis, “On the Chemical Components of Green Tea”, when she graduated as Japan’s first woman doctor of ag...

Today(2 September, 2021) is the 138th birthday, of Polish inventor, doctor, and immunologist, Rudolf Weigl. He produced the first effective vaccine against epidemic typhus - one of humanity’s oldest and most infectious diseases.  Rudolf Stefan Weigl, was born on 2 September, 1883, in Austro-Hungarian town of Przerów, (modern-day Czech Republic). He went on to study biological sciences at Poland’s Lwów University, and was appointed as a parasitologist in the Polish Army, in 1914. As millions across Eastern Europe were plagued by typhus, Weigl became determined to stop its spread.   Body lice were known to carry the typhus-infecting bacteria, Rickettsia prowazekii. So, Weigl adapted the tiny insect into a laboratory specimen. His innovative research, revealed how to use lice, to propagate the deadly bacteria, which he studied for decades with the hope of developing a vaccine. In 1936, Weigl’s vaccine successfully inoculated its first beneficiary. When Germany occupied Polan...