1925 in science

The year 1925 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy and space science

• January 1 –
  Cecilia Payne completes her PhD thesis Stellar Atmospheres: a Contribution to the Observational Study of High Temperature in the Reversing Layers of Stars^[1] at Radcliffe College of Harvard University, providing spectral evidence that stars are composed almost entirely of hydrogen with helium, contrary to scientific consensus at the time; however, her findings will be vindicated by 1929 and astronomer Otto Struve will describe her work as "the most brilliant PhD thesis ever written in astronomy".^[2]

• July 10–21 –
  Scopes Trial: In a staged test case (the "Monkey Trial") in Dayton, Tennessee, John T. Scopes, a young high school science teacher is accused of assigning a reading from a state-mandated textbook on Darwinian evolution in violation of a Tennessee state law, the "Butler Act". He is found guilty and fined $100, though the verdict is later overturned on a technicality.^[3]
• September – Official opening of Thijsse's Hof (Garden of Thijsse), the first wildlife garden in the Netherlands, in Bloemendaal near Haarlem.
• Approximate date – Extinction of the Bubal hartebeest in North Africa.

Cartography

• Adams hemisphere-in-a-square projection published by American cartographer Oscar Sherman Adams.^[4]

Chemistry

• May –
  Ida Tacke in Berlin, the last stable, non-radioactive naturally occurring element to be found.^[5]
• The Fischer–Tropsch process for production of hydrocarbons is first developed by Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Kohlenforschung in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany.

History of science

• Museum of the History of Science opens in the Old Ashmolean building in Oxford, set up by Robert Gunther based largely on the collection given by Dr Lewis Evans.^[6]
• Pharmazie-Historisches Museum der Universität Basel established by donation of the collection of pharmacist
  Josef Anton Häfliger.
• Edwin Arthur Burtt's The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science is published.

Physics

• January – Wolfgang Pauli announces his exclusion rule.^[7]
• June –
  Über quantentheoretische Umdeutung kinematischer und mechanischer Beziehungen" ("Quantum theoretical re-interpretation of kinematic and mechanical relations") in Zeitschrift für Physik
  .
• September–November – Heisenberg, Max Born and Pascual Jordan submit their papers "Zur Quantenmechanik" setting out their matrix formulation of quantum mechanics, to Zeitschrift für Physik.

Technology

• June 13 –
  U.S. Navy, the Department of Commerce
  and others. Jenkins calls this "the first public demonstration of radiovision".
• October 2 – John Logie Baird successfully transmits the first television pictures with a greyscale image, in London.^[9]
• October 22 – Julius Edgar Lilienfeld files the first patent for a form of field-effect transistor.^[10]
• November 4 – Charles F. Brannock files a patent for the Brannock Device for measuring shoe sizes.^[11]
• late 1925 or early
  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
  .
• Jonas Hesselman introduces the Hesselman engine.

Other events

• Sinclair Lewis's novel Arrowsmith is published in the United States, notable in having the culture of medical science as a principal theme.^[12]

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – James Franck, Gustav Ludwig Hertz
  • Chemistry – Richard Adolf Zsigmondy

Births

• January 7 – Gerald Durrell (died 1995), Indian-born British wildlife conservationist.
• January 30 – Douglas Engelbart (died 2013), American pioneer in human–computer interaction.
• February 1 – John F. Yardley (died 2001), American aeronautical engineer.
• February 25 – Elliott Organick (died 1985), American computer scientist and educator.
• February 28 – Louis Nirenberg (died 2020), Canadian-born American mathematician.
• March 1 – Solomon Marcus (died 2016), Romanian mathematician.
• March 20 – David Warren (died 2010), Australian aviation scientist.
• April 12 – Evelyn Berezin (died 2018), American computer scientist.
• May 1 – Scott Carpenter (died 2013), American astronaut.
• May 16 – Nancy Roman (died 2018), American astronomer.
• May 27 – John L. Harper (died 2009), British biologist, specializing in ecology and plant population biology.
• June 17 –
  psychopharmacologist
  .
• July 8 – Norbert Pfennig (died 2008), German microbiologist.
• July 26 – Joseph Engelberger (died 2015), American robotics engineer.
• August 10 – Stanislav Brebera (died 2012), Czech chemist.
• August 19 –
  solvent-accessible surface
  .
• September 16 – Eugene Garfield (died 2017), American pioneer of bibliometrics and scientometrics.
• September 27 –
  physiologist and pioneer of in vitro fertilisation, recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
  .
• September 28 – Seymour Cray (died 1996), American supercomputer architect.^[13]
• September 30 –
  Candidate of Technical Sciences, Docent, laureate of the Lenin and state prizes
  .
• October 13 – Margaret Roberts (died 2013), chemist and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
• October 29 – Klaus Roth (died 2015), German-born mathematician.
• October 31 –
  theoretical chemist, recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
  .
• November 16 – Michel Jouvet (died 2017), French oneirologist.
• December 1 – Martin Rodbell (died 1998), American biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• December 11 – Paul Greengard (died 2019), American neuroscientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Deaths

• February 3 – Oliver Heaviside (born 1850), English physicist.
• February 22 – Sir Clifford Allbutt (born 1836), English physician, inventor of the clinical thermometer.
• May 5 – Catharine van Tussenbroek (born 1852), Dutch physician.
• June 3 – Camille Flammarion (born 1842), French astronomer.
• June 22 – Felix Klein (born 1849), German mathematician.
• July 26 – Gottlob Frege (born 1848), German philosopher, logician and mathematician.
• October 31 – José Ingenieros (born 1877), Argentine polymath.

References