1913 in science
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The year 1913 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Astronomy
- February 9 â Meteor procession of February 9, 1913 visible along a great circle arc 6,040 miles (65 km) across the Americas. Astronomer Clarence Chant concludes that the source was a small, short-lived natural satellite of the Earth.[1][2]
- Berlin Observatory moves to Babelsberg.
Biology
Chemistry
- February â Daniel J. O'Conor and Herbert A. Faber file for a United States patent on the composite plastic laminate Formica.[3]
- Elmer McCollum and Marguerite Davis at the University of WisconsinâMadison, and Lafayette Mendel and Thomas Burr Osborne at Yale University independently discover Vitamin A.[4]
- Protactinium is first identified by Oswald Helmuth Göhring and Kasimir Fajans.
- Henry Moseley shows that nuclear charge is the real basis for numbering the elements and discovers a systematic relation between wavelength and atomic number by using x-ray spectra obtained by diffraction in crystals.[5] Frederick Soddy proposes that isotopes (a term suggested by Margaret Todd which he introduces) may have differing atomic weights[6] while he and Fajans independently propose the radioactive displacement law of Fajans and Soddy.[7]
- J. J. Thomson shows that charged subatomic particles can be separated by their mass-to-charge ratio, the technique known as mass spectrometry.[8]
- The Bergius process is first developed and patented by German chemist Friedrich Bergius.
Climatology
- Charles Fabry and Henri Buisson discover the ozone layer.
Geology
- Albert A. Michelson measures tides in the solid body of the Earth
History of science
- March â First publication of Isis, the journal of the history of science edited by George Sarton, in Ghent.
- Pierre Duhem begins publication of Le Système du Monde: Histoire des Doctrines cosmologiques de Platon à Copernic in Paris.
Mathematics
- March 6 â First publication of Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics, a polemical review of Peter Coffey's The Science of Logic[9] written in 1912 when Wittgenstein was an undergraduate studying with Bertrand Russell.
- Publication of the 3rd volume of Principia Mathematica by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, one of the most important and seminal works in mathematical logic and philosophy.
- Ãmile Borel first states the infinite monkey theorem in the way it will subsequently become known.[10]
Physics
- William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg work out the Bragg condition for strong X-ray reflection.
- Niels Bohr presents his quantum model of the atom.[11][12][13]
- William Crookes creates sunglass lenses.
- Robert Millikan measures the fundamental unit of electric charge.
- Georges Sagnac demonstrates the Sagnac effect, showing that light propagates at a speed independent of the speed of its source.[14][15][16]
- Johannes Stark demonstrates that strong electric fields will split the Balmer spectral line series of hydrogen.
Physiology and medicine
- Nikolay Anichkov first demonstrates the significance and role of cholesterol in atherosclerosis pathogenesis.[17]
- Albert Schweitzer sets up the Albert Schweitzer Hospital at Lambaréné in French Equatorial Africa.
Psychology
- John B. Watson publishes the article "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It" â sometimes called "The Behaviorist Manifesto".[18]
Technology
- April 29 â Swedish American engineer Gideon Sundback of Hoboken, New Jersey, patents the all-purpose zipper.
- May 26 (May 13 O.S.) â Igor Sikorsky flies the world's first 4-engine fixed-wing aircraft, his Bolshoi Baltisky biplane, near Saint Petersburg.[19][20]
- August â Invention of stainless steel by Harry Brearley in Sheffield, England (concurrent with the invention of another type in the United States by Elwood Haynes).[21]
- Oskar Barnack of Leitz produces the first 35 mm film miniature still camera.
- The Kaplan turbine is invented by Viktor Kaplan.[22]
- French inventor René Lorin patents the ramjet, but attempts to build a prototype fail due to inadequate materials.[23]
Publications
- Die Naturwissenschaften first published by Die Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e. V.
- Journal of Ecology first published.
Awards
Births
- January 31 â Murray Bowen (died 1990), American psychiatrist and pioneer of family therapy.
- February 28 â David Hawkins (died 2002), American philosopher of science and mathematics and science educator.
- March 2 â Georgy Flyorov (died 1990), Russian physicist who is known for his discovery of the spontaneous fission.
- March 26 â Paul ErdÅs (died 1996), Hungarian mathematician.[24]
- April 20 â Willi Hennig (died 1976), German entomologist and pioneer of cladistics.
- April 30 â Genevieve Grotjan Feinstein (died 2006), American mathematician and cryptanalyst.
- May 13 â Erich Lackner (died 1992), Austrian-born German civil engineer.
- June 10 â Edward Abraham (died 1999), English biochemist.
- August 20 â Roger Wolcott Sperry (died 1994), American neuropsychologist, neurobiologist and Nobel laureate.
- August 22 â Bruno Pontecorvo (died 1993), Italian-born physicist.
- October 10 â Remy Chauvin (died 2009), French biologist and entomologist.
- November 12 â Joel Elkes (died 2015), Königsberg-born pharmacologist.
Deaths
- January 2 â Léon Teisserenc de Bort (born 1855), French meteorologist.
- January 4 â Benjamin Leigh Smith (born 1828), English Arctic explorer.
- January 18 â George Alexander Gibson (born 1854), Scottish physician and geologist.
- February 20 â Robert von Lieben (born 1878), Austrian physicist.
- April 14 â Carl Hagenbeck (born 1844), German zoologist.
- April 26 â Sigismond Jaccoud (born 1830), Swiss-born French physician.
- May 28 â John Lubbock (born 1834), English naturalist and archaeologist.
- August 3 â Josephine Cochrane (born 1839), American inventor of the first commercially successful dishwasher.
- September 29 â Rudolf Diesel (born 1858), German mechanical engineer (lost overboard this night).
- November 7 â Alfred Russel Wallace (born 1823), British biologist.