1933 in science
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The year 1933 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Astronomy
- April â American radio engineer Karl Jansky of Bell Labs announces his discovery of a source of radio waves at the centre of Sagittarius (constellation), opening the field of radio astronomy.[1][2]
- October 13 â The British Interplanetary Society is founded.
- Walter Baade and Fritz Zwicky invent the concept of the neutron star, a new type of celestial object, suggesting that supernovae might be created by the collapse of a normal star to form a neutron star.
- Sir Arthur Eddington publishes The Expanding Universe: Astronomy's 'Great Debate', 1900â1931 in Cambridge.
- Comedian Will Hay observes the periodic Great White Spot on Saturn from his private observatory in London.[3]
- Fritz Zwicky postulates the existence of dark matter.[4]
Chemistry
- Gilbert N. Lewis isolates the first sample of pure heavy water by electrolysis.[5]
- Morris S. Kharasch and Frank R. Mayo propose that free radicals are responsible for anti-Markovnikov addition of hydrogen bromide to allyl bromide.[6][7]
Earth sciences
- March 10 â Long Beach earthquake in Southern California: First recording of earthquake strong ground motions by an accelerograph network, installed in 1932 by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey.
Mathematics
- Andrey Kolmogorov publishes Foundations of the Theory of Probability, laying the modern axiomatic foundations of probability theory.[8]
- David Champernowne, while still a Cambridge undergraduate, publishes his work on the Champernowne constant in real numbers.[9][10]
- Alfréd Haar introduces Haar measure.[11]
- Jerzy Neyman and Egon Pearson publish the NeymanâPearson lemma.[12]
- Stanley Skewes discovers Skewes' number.[13]
Pharmacology
- Late â Amphetamine is first presented as a pharmaceutical product when Smith, Kline and French in the United States begin selling it as an inhaler under the brand name Benzedrine as a decongestant.[14]
Physics
- September 12 â Leó Szilárd, waiting for a red light on Southampton Row in Bloomsbury (London), conceives the idea of the nuclear chain reaction.
- November 28 â Robert J. Van de Graaff conducts the first public demonstration of the Round Hill generator[15]
Physiology and medicine
- April 3 â First attempted human kidney transplant, by Dr Yuri Voronoy in the Soviet city of Kherson; the recipient dies 2 days later due to incompatibility of blood type with the (cadaveric) donor.[16][17][18][19]
- July 8 â English researchers Wilson Smith, Christopher Andrewes and Patrick Laidlaw report isolating a human influenza A virus and its transferability to ferrets.[20]
- July 14 â Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring enacted in Nazi Germany[21] allowing compulsory sterilization of citizens suffering from a list of alleged genetic disorders.
- Manfred Sakel begins to practice insulin shock therapy on psychiatric patients in Vienna.[22]
Technology
- March 7 â The hydraulic torque converter is patented by Alf Lysholm.[23]
- June â A research group at RCA headed by Vladimir K. Zworykin publicly launches the iconoscope, the first practical cathode-ray tube television camera.[24][25][26][27]
- June 26 â American Totalisator unveils its first tote board, the electronic pari-mutuel betting machine, at the Arlington Park race track near Chicago.
Organizations
- Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago) first opens to the public, as part of the Century of Progress Exposition.
- The Institute for Advanced Study opens at Princeton, New Jersey, attracting Albert Einstein, John von Neumann and Kurt Gödel.
- Sheffield Trades Historical Society (later South Yorkshire Industrial History Society) established in England.
Awards
- Nobel Prizes
- Physics â Erwin Schrödinger and Paul Dirac
- Chemistry â not awarded
- Physiology or Medicine â Thomas Hunt Morgan
Births
- January 6 â Oleg Makarov (died 2003), Soviet cosmonaut.
- January 18 â David Bellamy (died 2019), English botanist.
- March 9 â Sir David Weatherall (died 2018), English molecular geneticist.
- March 10 â Patricia Bergquist (died 2009), New Zealand scientist specializing in anatomy and taxonomy.
- March 23 â Philip Zimbardo, American social psychologist.
- April 1 â Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, French physicist and Nobel laureate
- April 14 â Yuri Oganessian, Russian nuclear physicist.
- April 26 â Arno Allan Penzias (died 2024), German-born American physicist and radio astronomer.
- May 22 â Chen Jingrun (died 1996), Chinese mathematician.
- July 9 â Oliver Sacks (died 2015), English-born neurologist.
- July 12 â Max Birnstiel (died 2014), Swiss molecular biologist.
- July 15 â John Hopfield, American neuroscientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
- August 10 â Ed Posner (died 1993), American mathematician.
- August 15
- Stanley Milgram (died 1984), American social psychologist.
- Michael Rutter (died 2021) English child psychiatrist.
- September 6 â Juliet Clutton-Brock (died 2015), English zooarchaeologist.
- September 10 â Yevgeny Khrunov (died 2000), Soviet cosmonaut.
- September 26 â Charles C. Conley (died 1984), American mathematician specializing in dynamical systems.
- October 2 â Sir John Gurdon (died 2025), English developmental biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
- October 9 â Sir Peter Mansfield (died 2017), English physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
- November 1 â Dijen K. Ray-Chaudhuri, Bengali-born mathematician.
- November 4 â Sir Charles K. Kao (died 2018), Chinese electrical engineer and physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
- November 14 â Akira Endo (died 2024), Japanese biochemist.[28]
- December 22 â Thomas Stockham (died 2004), American electrical engineer and inventor
- December 23 â Akihito, ichthyologist and Emperor of Japan.
Deaths
- January 14 â Sir Robert Jones, 1st Baronet (born 1857), Welsh orthopaedic surgeon.
- May 22 â Sándor Ferenczi (born 1873), Hungarian psychoanalyst.
- June 14 â Ernest William Moir (born 1862), British civil engineer.
- September 25 â Paul Ehrenfest (born 1880), Austrian physicist and mathematician.
- October 29
- Albert Calmette (born 1863), French physician, bacteriologist and immunologist.
- Paul Painlevé (born 1863), mathematician and statesman, 62nd Prime Minister of France.
- November 3 â Pierre Paul Ãmile Roux (born 1853), French physician, bacteriologist and immunologist.
- December 8 â John Joly (born 1857), Irish physicist.