Articles - The week that...

February 14, 1747: A paper by British astronomer James Bradley outlining his discovery of a wobbling motion in Earth’s axial rotation, is read at the Royal Society. Bradley coined the name nutation (from Latin nutare – to nod) to define the newly discovered phenomenon which he first observed during his studies at Molyneux's observatory. He attributed it to the moon's gravitational influence, but withheld any announcement until he had observed a full cycle of the motion of the moon's nodes, which took more than 18 years.
February 16, 1923: Archaeologist Howard Carter opens the sealed doorway to the sepulchral chamber of King Tutankhamen's tomb in Thebes, Egypt.
February 17, 1913: English chemist and physicist Frederick Soddy  introduces the term "isotope" from the Greek, meaning "at the same place", to refer to different atoms of the same element in the periodic table. The term was coined by Margaret Todd, a Scottish physician and distant relative of Soddy during a conversation with him.