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.
Astronomy
[edit]- Hendrik van de Hulst predicts the 21 cm hyperfine line of neutral interstellar hydrogen.
Biology
[edit]- 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
[edit]- February – Lars Onsager publishes the exact solution to the two-dimensional Ising model.[6]
- Americium discovered by Glenn T. Seaborg, et al.
Computer science
[edit]- August 7 – IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, best known as the Harvard Mark I.
Geology
[edit]- March 18 – Last eruption of Mount Vesuvius.
History of science
[edit]- 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
[edit]- John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern's book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior is published by Princeton University Press.
Medicine
[edit]- November 19 – Minnesota Starvation Experiment begins.
- Hans Asperger describes Asperger syndrome.[7]
- David S. Sheridan invents the disposable plastic tracheal tube catheter.[8]
- Dorothea and Alexander Leighton's book Navajo at the Door is "the earliest example of applied medical anthropology".[9]
Meteorology
[edit]- 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.[10]
Physics
[edit]- November 6 – Hanford Site in Washington (state) produces its first plutonium.
Technology
[edit]- March 27 – In Sweden, Ruben Rausing patents Erik Wallenberg's method of packaging milk in paper, origin of the company Tetra Pak.[11]
- 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.[12]
- 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.
Awards
[edit]Births
[edit]- February 8 – Howard Dalton (died 2008), English microbiologist.
- February 15 – Sigurd Hofmann, German physicist.
- March 7 – Michael Rosbash, American geneticist and chronobiologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
- June 1 – Colin Blakemore, English neurobiologist (died 2022).
- June 5 – Whitfield Diffie, American cryptographer.
- June 6 – Phillip Allen Sharp, American geneticist and molecular biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
- June 22 – Gérard Mourou, French electrical engineer, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
- July 13 – Ernő Rubik, Hungarian inventor and architect.
- August 24 – Gregory Jarvis (died 1986), American astronaut.
- October 11 – William T. Greenough (died 2013), American neuroscientist.
- October 16 – Elizabeth Loftus, American psychologist.
- October 21 – Jean-Pierre Sauvage, French coordination chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
- December 19 – Richard Leakey (died 2022), Kenyan palaeoanthropologist.
- December 28 – Kary Mullis (died 2019), American biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Deaths
[edit]- January 19 – Emily Winifred Dickson (born 1866), British gynaecologist.[14]
- January 20 – James McKeen Cattell (born 1860), American psychologist.
- February 8 – Bernard Sachs (born 1858), American neurologist.
- March – John R.F. Jeffreys (born 1918), British mathematician and cryptanalysist (tuberculosis).
- March 2 – Ida Maclean (born 1877), English biochemist.
- March 5 – Ernst Cohen (born 1869), Dutch Jewish chemist (in Auschwitz concentration camp).
- March 29 – Grace Chisholm Young (born 1868), English mathematician.
- April 16 – Percy Lane Oliver (born 1878), British pioneer of voluntary blood donation
- August 23 – Margarete Zuelzer (born 1877), German Jewish microbiologist (in Westerbork transit camp).
- June 18 – Harry Fielding Reid (born 1859), American geophysicist.
- July 25 – Jakob Johann von Uexküll (born 1864), Baltic German pioneer of biosemiotics.[15]
- November 2 – Thomas Midgley Jr. (born 1889), American chemist and inventor.
- November 22 – Sir Arthur Eddington (born 1882), English astrophysicist.
References
[edit]- ^ Avery, Oswald T.; MacLeod, Colin M.; McCarty, Maclyn (1944-02-01). "Studies on the Chemical Nature of the Substance Inducing Transformation of Pneumococcal Types: Induction of TransFormation by a Desoxyribonucleic Acid Fraction Isolated from Pneumococcus Type III". Journal of Experimental Medicine. 79 (2). Rockefeller University Press: 137–158. doi:10.1084/jem.79.2.137. PMC 2135445. PMID 19871359. (Received for publication 1 November 1943.)
- ^ Fruton, Joseph S. (1999). Proteins, Enzymes, Genes: the interplay of chemistry and biology. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press. pp. 438–440. ISBN 0-300-07608-8.
- ^ Shear, M. J. (1944). "Chemical treatment of tumors, IX: Reactions of mice with primary subcutaneous tumors to injection of a hemorrhage-producing bacterial polysaccharide". Journal of the National Cancer Institute. 4 (5): 461–76. doi:10.1093/jnci/4.5.461.
- ^ Yoon, Carol Kaesuk (2003-11-14). "Donald R. Griffin, 88, Dies; Argued Animals Can Think". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-07-16.
- ^ Guggisberg, Charles Albert Walter (1961). Simba: the life of the lion. Cape Town: Howard Timmins.
- ^ Onsager, Lars (1944). "Crystal Statistics. I. A Two-Dimensional Model with an Order-Disorder Transition". Physical Review. 65 (3–4): 117–149. Bibcode:1944PhRv...65..117O. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.65.117.
- ^ Asperger, H. (1991) [1944]. "'Autistic psychopathy' in childhood". In Frith, Uta (ed.). Autism and Asperger Syndrome. Cambridge University Press. pp. 37–92. ISBN 0-521-38448-6.
- ^ Heinz, W. C. (1988). Inventor: the Dave Sheridan Story. Albany, New York: Albany Medical Center.
- ^ Peoples, James; Bailey, Garrick (2014). Humanity: An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. Cengage. p. 410. ISBN 9781285733371.
- ^ Larsson, Anders (2002-04-23). "Ett fenomen som gäckar vetenskapen" (in Swedish). Uppsala University. Retrieved 2016-01-05.
- ^ Sedig, Kjell (2002). Swedish Innovations. Stockholm: The Swedish Institute. p. 45. ISBN 91-520-0910-6.
- ^ Neufeld, Michael J. (1995). The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era. New York: The Free Press. pp. 158, 160–162, 190.
- ^ "6 Women Scientists Who Were Snubbed Due to Sexism". National Geographic News. 19 May 2013. Archived from the original on September 3, 2019. Retrieved 19 January 2021.
- ^ "Emily Winifred Dickson Martin". The Lancet. 243 (6288): 327. March 1944. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(00)42291-9.
- ^ Brentari, Carlo (2015). Jakob von Uexküll: The Discovery of the Umwelt between Biosemiotics and Theoretical Biology. Springer.