Also on This Day in History December 20
Discover what happened on December 20 with HISTORY's summaries of major events, anniversaries,
famous births and notable deaths.
Births on This Day, December 20
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1901
Robert Jemison Van de Graaff
American physicist and inventor of the Van de Graaff generator, a type of high-voltage electrostatic generator that can be used as a particle accelerator in atomic research.
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1868
Harvey S. Firestone
Harvey S(amuel) Firestone was an American industrialist who developed straight-side pneumatic tyres used on the Model T Fords.
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1890
Jaroslav Heyrovský
Czech chemist who received the 1959 Nobel Prize for Chemistry "for his discovery and development of the polarographic methods of analysis" (1922), which is one of the most versatile analytical techniques.
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1876
Walter Adams
Walter Sydney Adams was an American astronomer who is best known for his spectroscopic studies of sunspots, the rotation of the Sun, the velocities and distances of thousands of stars, and planetary atmospheres.
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1935
William Julius Wilson
Black-American sociologist who is a leading scholar of urban poverty.
Deaths on This Day, December 20
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2002
Grote Reber
U.S. amateur astronomer and radio engineer who self-financed and built the first radio telescope.
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1915
Thomas L. Willson
Thomas Leopold Willson was a Canadian-American chemist and inventor who discovered a commercial production method for calcium carbide using an electric arc furnace.
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1993
W. Edwards Deming
William Edwards Deming was an American statistician, known as the father of “Total Quality Management.”
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1590
Ambroise Paré
French physician, one of the greatest surgeons of the European Renaissance, known as the "father of modern surgery" for his many innovations in operative methods.
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1962
Emil Artin
Austro-German mathematician who worked in algebraic number theory, made a major contribution to field theory, and stated a law of reciprocity which included all previously known laws of reciprocity (1927).