News Currents for February 10, 2012: Big-Thinker Birthdays

Mid-February is a noteworthy time for the birth of innovators and big thinkers. The 11th is the 165th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Edison and the 12th marks 203 years since the birth of Charles Darwin. It is fitting that the Science and Technical Oscar awards will be given out this weekend to celebrate the innovations that make movies one of our most beloved forms of entertainment -- after all, it was Edison who invented the first motion picture camera. Please click through to find videos and notes about more February birthdays after the jump.

Here’s the newest Inside Science News Service story, discussing several of the award-winning innovations that will be honored this weekend.

Here is a video of another famous biologist, Ernst Mayr, talking about Darwin and his theories . More videos of Mayr and others talking about Darwin are available at this link .

And, to complete this week’s News Currents, here’s a story that’s been around for a while, but is still rather astonishing. Sometimes the simplest innovations can make a tremendous difference in our lives. This one uses the sun, a soda bottle, and ordinary water to bring light into homes.

Here’s a short, by no means exhaustive, list of other notable mid-February birthdays:

Author Jules Verne, February 8, 1828

Physicist William Shockley, who invented the transistor, February 13, 1910

Inventor of the stethoscope, Rene-Theophile-Hyacinthe Lannec, born February 17, 1781