1906 in science
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The year 1906 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Chemistry
- Charles Barkla discovers that each element has a characteristic X-ray and that the degree of penetration of these X-rays is related to the atomic weight of the element.
- Mikhail Tsvet first names the chromatography technique for organic compound separation, in the course of demonstrating that chlorophyll is not a single chemical compound.[1][2]
Geology
- April 18 â The San Francisco earthquake, an estimated 7.9 on the Richter scale and centered on the San Andreas Fault, strikes near San Francisco, California. The earthquake and fire destroy over 80% of the buildings in the city, and kill as many as 6,000 people. Harry Fielding Reid devises the elastic-rebound theory to account for earthquake mechanism.[3]
- Richard Oldham argues that the Earth has a molten interior.[4]
Mathematics
- Andrey Markov produces his first theories on Markov chain processes.
- Axel Thue uses the ThueâMorse sequence to found the study of combinatorics on words.
Medicine
- September â Last death from yellow fever in the Panama Canal Zone following a mosquito eradication program led by William C. Gorgas.[5]
- OctoberâDecember â Martha Baer undergoes sex reassignment surgery to become Karl M. Baer in Germany.
- November 3 â A speech given by Alois Alzheimer for the first time presents the pathology and clinical symptoms of pre-senile dementia together;[6][7] the condition will rapidly become known as Alzheimer's disease.[8]
- BCG (Bacilli-Calmette-Guerin) immunization for tuberculosis first developed.
- Transmission of dengue fever by the Aedes mosquito is confirmed.[9]
- Frederick Hopkins proposes the existence of vitamins and suggests that a lack of them causes scurvy and rickets.
- Charles Sherrington publishes The Integrative Action of the Nervous System.
- Clemens Peter von Pirquet, with Béla Schick, coins the term "allergy" to describe hypersensitive reactions.
- Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast, is completed, the first such air conditioned building in the world.
- George Newman publishes Infant Mortality: a Social Problem in England.
- August von Wassermann develops a complement fixation test for the diagnosis of syphilis.
Physics
- Walther Nernst presents a formulation of the third law of thermodynamics.
Technology
- January â Lee De Forest files a patent for the Audion vacuum tube, which helps usher in the age of electronics.[10]
- February 10 â Launch of British battleship HMS Dreadnought.
- March 18 â At Montesson in France, Romanian inventor Traian Vuia becomes the first person to achieve an unassisted takeoff in a heavier-than-air powered monoplane, but it is incapable of sustained flight.
- October 18 â German inventor Arthur Korn demonstrates the transmission of a photograph electronically over a distance of 1800 km[11] using his Bildetelegraph or phototelautograph system.
- December 24 â Reginald Fessenden makes the first radio broadcast, including a musical recording, a violin solo, and readings, from Brant Rock, Massachusetts.
- The first practicable gyrocompass is invented by Hermann Anschütz-Kaempfe in Germany.[12][13]
Events
- November 12 â First displays of the Deutsches Museum open to the public in Munich.
Publications
- African Invertebrates begins publication as Annals of the Natal Government Museum; it will be continuing publication more than a century later.
Awards
Births
- January 6 â G. Ledyard Stebbins (died 2000), American botanist and geneticist.
- January 10 â Grigore Moisil (died 1973), Romanian mathematician.
- January 11 â Albert Hofmann (died 2008), Swiss chemist.
- February 3
- George Adamson (died 1989), Indian-born wildlife conservationist.
- Ilona Banga (died 1998), Hungarian biochemist.
- February 4 â Clyde Tombaugh (died 1997), American astronomer.
- February 17 â Elizabeth M. Ramsey (died 1993), American research physician.
- February 18 â Hans Asperger (died 1980), Austrian pediatrician.
- April 28 â Kurt Gödel (died 1978), Austrian mathematician.
- June 13 â Bruno de Finetti (died 1985), Italian statistician.
- June 15 â Gordon Welchman (died 1985), English-born mathematician and cryptanalyst.
- June 18 â Orvan Hess (died 2002), American obstetrician.
- June 23 â Derek Jackson (died 1982), Swiss-born British spectroscopist and steeplechase rider (also his twin brother Vivian).
- June 28 â Maria Göppert (died 1972), German-born theoretical physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
- July 2 â Hans Bethe (died 2005), German-born physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
- July 7 â William Feller (died 1970), Croatian-born American mathematician.
- August 19 â Philo Farnsworth (died 1971), American television pioneer.
- September 1 â Karl August Folkers (died 1997), American biochemist.
- September 4 â Max Delbrück (died 1981), German-born biologist.
- September 30 â Vera Faddeeva (died 1983), Soviet mathematician.
- October 2 â Willy Ley (died 1969), German-born scientific populariser.
- November 3 â Carl Benjamin Boyer (died 1976), American historian of mathematics.
- November 5 â Fred Lawrence Whipple (died 2004), American astronomer, coins the term "dirty snowball" to explain the nature of comets.
- November 18 â George Wald (died 1997), American scientist.
- December 2 â Peter Carl Goldmark (died 1977), Hungarian-born American engineer
- December 9 â Grace Hopper (died 1992), American computer scientist.
- December 25 â Ernst Ruska (died 1988), German physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Deaths
- January 13 (Old Style December 31, 1905) â Alexander Stepanovich Popov (born 1859), Russian physicist.
- January 14 â Hermann Sprengel (born 1834), German-born British chemist.
- February 27 â Samuel Pierpont Langley (born 1834), American astronomer.
- March 8 â Henry Baker Tristram (born 1822), English ornithologist.
- April 19 â Pierre Curie (born 1859), French winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, in road accident.
- May 15 â James Blyth (born 1839), Scottish electrical engineer.
- July 5 â Paul Drude (born 1863), German physicist (suicide).
- September 5 â Ludwig Boltzmann (born 1844), Austrian physicist.