December 20 in Medical History
20 entries: discoveries, epidemics, drugs and the people who shaped medicine.
Events
- The crystallization of the first virus, the tobacco mosaic virus (TMV), by Wendell Stanley is announced in the journal Science, for which he is awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on December 10, 1946
- War on drugs: The United Nations agrees upon and promulgates the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, one of three major drug control treaties currently in force.
- New figures show average US male weighs 198 pounds and stands 5 feet 9 inches, women 171 pounds and 5 feet 4 inches
- European countries begin closing their borders to the UK after news of a faster-spreading variant of COVID-19 across London and the south-east
- Multinational company 3M says it will stop making and using "forever chemicals", linked to health problems such as cancer
Born on this day
- Joseph ha-Kohenhistorian and physician (died 1575)
- Urban HjärneSwedish chemist, geologist, and physician (died 1724)
- Arthur LeeAmerican physician and diplomat (died 1792)
- Samuel MuddAmerican physician (imprisoned for conspiring with John Wilkes Booth), born in Charles Country, Maryland (d. 1883)
- Mary Ann BevanEnglish nurse who, after developing acromegaly, toured the circus sideshow circuit as "the ugliest woman in the world" (died 1933)
- Martyn Lloyd-JonesWelsh preacher and physician (died 1981)
- John MenkesAustrian-American pediatric and writer (died 2008)
Died on this day
- Thomas LinacreEnglish scholar and physician
- Ambroise ParéFrench physician (b. 1510)
- Augustus Quirinus RivinusGerman physician and botanist, dies at 71
- Robert KnoxScottish surgeon and anatomist, dies at 71
- Julius Richard PetriGerman microbiologist generally credited with inventing the device known as the Petri dish, dies at 69
- Ramon CarrilloArgentine neuroscientist and Public Health minister (b. 1906)
- Alan Lloyd HodgkinBritish biophysicist (Nobel 1963), dies at 84
- Per-Ingvar BrånemarkSwedish surgeon and academic (born 1929)