1944 in science
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| 1944 in science |
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The year 1944 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
- Hendrik van de Hulst predicts the 21 cm hyperfine line of neutral interstellar hydrogen.
Biology
- February 1 – Oswald T. Avery and colleagues publish the Avery–MacLeod–McCarty experiment[1] showing that a DNA molecule can carry an inheritable trait to a living organism. This is important because many biologists thought that proteins were the hereditary material and nucleic acids too simple chemically to serve as genetic storage molecules.[2]
- The lipopolysaccharide character of enteric endotoxins is elucidated by M. J. Shear.[3]
- Erwin Schrödinger publishes What is Life?, containing conceptual discussion of the genetic code and of negentropy.
- Donald Griffin with G. W. Pierce demonstrate that bats use high-frequency sound in a technique which Griffin describes as echolocation.[4]
- Last known evidence for existence of the Asiatic lion in the wild in Iran (Khuzestan province).[5]
Chemistry
- February – Lars Onsager publishes the exact solution to the two-dimensional Ising model.[6]
- Americium discovered by Glenn T. Seaborg, et al.
Computer science
- August 7 – IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, best known as the Harvard Mark I.
Geology
- March 18 – Last eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
History of science
- November 4 – The Whipple Museum of the History of Science is established when Robert Whipple presents his collection of scientific instruments to the University of Cambridge, England.
- C. Doris Hellman publishes her Columbia University thesis The Comet of 1577: Its Place in the History of Astronomy.
Mathematics
- John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern's book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior is published by Princeton University Press.
Medicine
- November 19 – Minnesota Starvation Experiment begins.
- Hans Asperger describes Asperger syndrome.[7]
- Franz Josef Kallmann describes Kallmann syndrome.[8][9]
- David S. Sheridan invents the disposable plastic tracheal tube catheter.[10]
- Dorothea and Alexander Leighton's book Navajo at the Door is "the earliest example of applied medical anthropology".[11]
Meteorology
- June 5 – Group Captain James Stagg correctly forecasts a brief improvement in weather conditions over the English Channel which permits the following day's Normandy landings to take place.
- August 6 – Ball lightning observed in Uppsala, Sweden.[12]
Physics
- November 6 – Hanford Site in Washington (state) produces its first plutonium.
Technology
- March 27 – In Sweden, Ruben Rausing patents Erik Wallenberg's method of packaging milk in paper, origin of the company Tetra Pak.[13]
- June 13 – First operational use of the German V-1 flying bomb, the first operational cruise missile, containing a gyroscope guidance system and propelled by a simple pulsejet engine.
- September 8 – First operational use of the German V-2 rocket, the first ballistic missile. On June 20 one has become the first man-made object to cross the Kármán line and reach the edge of space.[14]
- December 9 – First flight of the Heinkel He 162 Volksjäger, the second jet engined fighter aircraft to be introduced by the Luftwaffe in World War II.
- First operational use of a snorkel on a submarine.
