1918 in science
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The year 1918 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Astronomy
- June 8 – Nova Aquila, the brightest observed since 1604, is discovered.
- Kiyotsugu Hirayama identifies several groups of main belt asteroids, now known as Hirayama families.
- Harlow Shapley demonstrates that globular clusters are arranged in a spheroid or halo whose center is not the Earth, but the center of the galaxy.
- Max Wolf discovers the star Wolf 359.
- Heber Curtis discovers a relativistic jet of matter emerging from Elliptical galaxy M87.
Biology
- February 21 – The last known Carolina Parakeet (the only parrot species native to the eastern United States) dies in Cincinnati Zoo.
- R. A. Fisher puts forward a genetic model that shows that continuous variation could be the result of Mendelian inheritance in his paper "The Correlation Between Relatives on the Supposition of Mendelian Inheritance".
- J. Henri Fabre's The Sacred Beetle, and others published in English.
- Jacques Loeb's Forced Movements, Tropisms, and Animal Conduct published in the United States.
Cryptography
- February 23 – Arthur Scherbius applies to patent the Enigma machine.[1]
- Edward Hugh Hebern patents the Hebern rotor machine.
History of science
- Technisches Museum Wien opens in Vienna.
Mathematics
- Felix Hausdorff introduces the concept of the fractional Hausdorff dimension.[2]
- Gaston Julia describes the iteration of a rational function.[3]
Physics
- Josef Lense and Hans Thirring find the gravitomagnetic precession of gyroscopes in the equations of general relativity.
- Hans Reissner and Gunnar Nordström solve the Einstein and Maxwell field equations for charged spherically-symmetric non-rotating systems.
- Friedrich Kottler gets Schwarzschild solution without Einstein vacuum field equations.
Physiology and medicine
- January – 1918 flu pandemic: "Spanish 'flu" (influenza) first observed in Haskell County, Kansas.[4]
- March 26 – Dr. Marie Stopes publishes her influential book Married Love in the U.K., following it with Wise Parenthood, a treatise on birth control.
- June–August – "Spanish 'flu" becomes pandemic.[5]
- September 7 – J. B. Christopherson publishes his discovery that antimony potassium tartrate is an effective cure for bilharzia.[6]
- Hartog Jacob Hamburger describes the chloride shift.[7]
Technology
- Edwin Armstrong invents the superheterodyne receiver.
- Theodore von Karman and Asbóth Oszkár build the first co-axial helicopter.
- A. M. Nicolson invents the radio crystal oscillator
- Charles Strite invents the pop-up toaster.[8]
Awards
- Nobel Prize
- Physics – Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck
- Chemistry – Fritz Haber
- Medicine – not awarded
Births
- January 23 – Gertrude B. Elion (died 1999), pharmacologist, Nobel laureate.
- January 27 – Antonín Mrkos (died 1996), astronomer.
- March 16 – Frederick Reines (died 1998), physicist.
- April 4 – Joseph Ashbrook (died 1980), astronomer.
- April 25 – Gérard de Vaucouleurs (died 1995), astronomer.
- May 11 – Richard Feynman (died 1988), physicist, Nobel laureate.
- June 6 – Edwin G. Krebs (died 2009), Nobel Prize-winning American biochemist.
- July 15 – Bertram N. Brockhouse (died 2003), physicist.
- July 16 – Samuel Victor Perry (died 2009), English biochemist who was a pioneer in the field of muscle biochemistry.
- August 13 – Frederick Sanger (died 2013), double Nobel Prize-winning English molecular biologist.
- August 29 – John Herivel (died 2011), cryptanalyst and science historian.
- September 27 – Martin Ryle (died 1984), astronomer.
- October 4 – Adrian Kantrowitz (died 2008), cardiac surgeon.
- November 10 – Ernst Otto Fischer (died 2007), chemist, Nobel laureate.
- November 19 – Hendrik C. van de Hulst (died 2000), astronomer.
- December 25 – Tamara Mikhailovna Smirnova (died 2001), astronomer.
- December – John R.F. Jeffreys (died 1944), mathematician and cryptanalysist.
Deaths
- January 6 – Georg Cantor (born 1845), mathematician.
- January 26 – Ewald Hering (born 1834), physiologist.
- January 31 – Ivan Pulyui (born 1845), physicist.
- April 20 – Karl Ferdinand Braun (born 1850), physicist.
- May 1 – G. K. Gilbert (born 1843), geologist.
- May 31 – Alexander Mitscherlich (born 1836), chemist.
- June 27 – George Mary Searle (born 1839), astronomer.
- June 29 – Alfred Senier (born 1853), chemist.
- September 7 – Peter Ludwig Mejdell Sylow (born 1832), mathematician.
- October 28 – Ulisse Dini (born 1845), mathematician.
- November 3 – Aleksandr Lyapunov (born 1857), mathematician and physicist.
- November 29 – Thomas Allinson (born 1858), physician and dietetic reformer.
- December 26 – William Hampton Patton (born 1853), entomologist.
- December 27 – Birt Acres (born 1854), pioneer of cinematography.
References
- ↑ Singh, Simon (1999). The Code Book: the Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography. London: Fourth Estate. p. 127. ISBN 1-85702-879-1.
- ↑ Crilly, Tony (2007). 50 Mathematical Ideas you really need to know. London: Quercus. p. 97. ISBN 978-1-84724-008-8.
- ↑ "Mémoire sur l'itération des fonctions rationnelles". Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées 8: 47–245.
- ↑ Barry, John M. (2005) [2004]. The Great Influenza; The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. New York: Penguin Books.
- ↑ "La Grippe Espagnole de 1918". Institut Pasteur. Archived from the original on 4 June 2011. Retrieved 3 May 2011.
- ↑ Christopherson, J. B. (1918). "The Successful Use of Antimony in Bilharziosis". The Lancet 192 (4958): 325. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(01)02807-0. Retrieved 2013-02-06.
- ↑ Hamburger, H. J. (1918). "Anionenwanderungen in serum und blut unter dem einfluss von CO2, Saure und Akali". Biochemische Zeitschrift 86: 309–324.
- ↑ U.S. patent #1,394,450 on October 18, 1921.