Rahul Sharma (Editor)

1913 in science

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Astronomy

  • February 9 – Meteor procession of February 9, 1913 visible along a great circle arc 6,040 miles (9,720 km) across the Americas. Astronomer Clarence Chant concludes that the source was a small, short-lived natural satellite of the Earth.
  • Berlin Observatory moves to Babelsberg.
  • Biology

  • William Temple Hornaday publishes Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation.
  • Chemistry

  • February – Daniel J. O'Conor and Herbert A. Faber file for a United States patent on the composite plastic laminate Formica.
  • Elmer McCollum and Marguerite Davis at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and Lafayette Mendel and Thomas Burr Osborne at Yale University independently discover Vitamin A.
  • Protactinium is first identified by Kasimir Fajans and O. H. Göhring.
  • 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. Frederick Soddy proposes that isotopes (a term which he introduces) may have differing atomic weights.
  • J. J. Thomson shows that charged subatomic particles can be separated by their mass-to-charge ratio, the technique known as mass spectrometry.
  • 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

  • Pierre Duhem begins publication of Le Système du Monde: Histoire des Doctrines cosmologiques de Platon à Copernic in Paris.
  • Mathematics

  • March 6 – First publication of Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics, a polemical review of Peter Coffey's The Science of Logic 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.
  • Émile Borel first states the infinite monkey theorem in the way it will subsequently become known.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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" — sometimes called "The Behaviorist Manifesto".
  • Technology

  • April 29 – Swedish American engineer Gideon Sundback of Hoboken, New Jersey, patents the all-purpose zipper.
  • May 26 (May 13 O.S.) – Igor Sikorsky flies the world's first 4-engine fixed-wing aircraft, his Bolshoi Baltisky biplane, near Saint Petersburg.
  • August – Invention of stainless steel by Harry Brearley in Sheffield, England (concurrent with the invention of another type in the United States by Elwood Haynes).
  • French inventor René Lorin patents the ramjet, but attempts to build a prototype fail due to inadequate materials.
  • Publications

  • Die Naturwissenschaften first published by Die Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e. V.
  • Journal of Ecology first published.
  • Awards

  • Nobel Prize
  • Physics – Heike Kamerlingh Onnes
  • Chemistry – Alfred Werner
  • Medicine – Charles Richet
  • Births

  • January 31 – Murray Bowen (died 1990), American psychiatrist and pioneer of family therapy.
  • February 28 – David Hawkins (died 2002), American philosopher of science and mathematics and science educator.
  • March 26 – Paul Erdős (died 1996), Hungarian mathematician.
  • April 20 – Willi Hennig (died 1976), German entomologist and pioneer of cladistics.
  • May 13 – Erich Lackner (died 1992), Austrian-born German civil engineer.
  • June 10 – Edward Abraham (died 1999), English biochemist.
  • August 20 – Roger Wolcott Sperry (died 1994), American neuropsychologist, neurobiologist and Nobel laureate.
  • October 10 – Remy Chauvin (died 2009), French biologist and entomologist.
  • November 12 – Joel Elkes (died 2015), Königsberg-born pharmacologist.
  • Deaths

  • January 2 – Léon Teisserenc de Bort (born 1855), French meteorologist.
  • January 18 – George Alexander Gibson (born 1854), Scottish physician and geologist.
  • February 20 – Robert von Lieben (born 1878), Austrian physicist.
  • April 14 – Carl Hagenbeck (born 1844), German zoologist.
  • April 26 – Sigismond Jaccoud (born 1830), Swiss-born French physician.
  • May 28 – John Lubbock (born 1834), English naturalist and archaeologist.
  • August 3 – Josephine Cochrane (born 1839), American inventor of the first commercially successful dishwasher.
  • September 29 – Rudolf Diesel (born 1858), German mechanical engineer (lost overboard this night).
  • November 7 – Alfred Russel Wallace (born 1823), British biologist.
  • References

    1913 in science Wikipedia


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