MAJOR HAPPENINGS IN SCIENCE

Great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov was born on 2 January 1920. Every science-loving person knows about Asimov. But how many of you have heard about Nil Ratan Dhar an Indian chemist who was also born on 2 January 1892 – twenty eight years before Asimov was born?• In a computer laboratory at a satellite campus of the University of Central Missouri a new Mersenne Prime Number is discovered on 7 January 2016 which is 274207281 – 1 i.e. 2 to the power of 72207281 minus 1! (you know 2 to the power 5 is 32). This number is not divisible by any positive integer except 1 and itself. The previous largest was 257885161 – 1 which has a mere 17 million or so digits. Mersenne primes are those that can be written in the form 2n – 1 where n is an integer. They are named after Marin Mersenne a French theologian and mathematician who studied them in the early 17th century.• 12 October 1999 was celebrated as the Day of 6 Billion since the 6 billion figure of human population was reached on that day. According to the United Nations world population reached 7 Billion on October 31 2011 and it is expected to reach 8 billion in the spring of 2024.These are few examples that help you understand how interesting is history of science which takes you to past and gives prediction of future happenings.