Robert Bunsen's 200th Birthday

Source: http://www.google.com/logos/2011/bunsen11-hp.png

Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen (30 March 1811 – 16 August 1899) was a German chemist. He investigated emission spectra of heated elements, and with Gustav Kirchhoff discovered caesium (in 1860) and rubidium (in 1861). Bunsen developed several gas-analytical methods, was a pioneer in photochemistry, and did early work in the field of organoarsenic chemistry. With his laboratory assistant, Peter Desaga, he developed the Bunsen burner, an improvement on the laboratory burners then in use. The Bunsen–Kirchhoff Award for spectroscopy is named after Bunsen and Kirchhoff. The Robert Wilhelm Bunsen Medal is assigned every year by the European Geosciences Union (www.egu.eu) to scientists who provided significant advance in the fields of Geochemistry, Mineralogy, Petrology, and Volcanology. [Read more on Wikipedia]

Hans Christian Ørsted's Birthday

Hans Christian Ørsted (often rendered Oersted in English; 14 August 1777 - 9 March 1851) was a Danish physicist and chemist who is most widely known for discovering that electric currents create magnetic fields, an important aspect of electromagnetism. He shaped post-Kantian philosophy and advances in science throughout the late 19th century. [Read more on Wikipedia]