1927 in science

The year 1927 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy and astrophysics

• Edward Emerson Barnard's A Photographic Atlas of Selected Regions of the Milky Way is published posthumously.

Botany

• The
  University of Kyiv
  .

Chemistry

• Fritz London and Walter Heitler apply quantum mechanics to explain covalent bonding in the hydrogen molecule,^[1] which marks the birth of quantum chemistry.^[2][3]

Environment

• Carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning and industry reach one billion tonnes per year.^[4]

• American biologist Raymond Pearl publishes an influential attack on the basic assumptions of eugenics.^[5][6]

Mathematics

• Publication of the 2nd edition of Principia Mathematica by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, one of the most important and seminal works in mathematical logic and philosophy.

Medicine

• António Egas Moniz develops cerebral angiography.^[7]

Microbiology

• Ronald Canti's ground-breaking stop-motion cinematic technique vividly illustrated the microscopic behaviour of normal and neoplastic cells; irradiation was shown to cause immobilisation and mitotic arrest in suspensions of cells.^[8][9]

Physics

• February 23 –
  theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg writes a letter to fellow physicist Wolfgang Pauli in which he describes his uncertainty principle
  for the first time.
• April – Abbé
  primeval atom'.^[15][16]
• October – The fifth Solvay Conference meets in Brussels to discuss the newly formulated quantum mechanics. Albert Einstein attacks the theories of Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg.

Technology

• August 2 – American electrical engineer Harold Stephen Black invents the negative-feedback amplifier.
• September 7 – Philo Farnsworth's electronic image dissector television camera tube transmits its first image at his laboratory at 202 Green Street in San Francisco.
• November 5 – Completion of a bridge by
  Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing in Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania, the world's first railroad bridge of wholly welded construction.^[17]
• Date unknown
  • Emil Lerp invents the transportable gasoline chainsaw.
  • J.C. Deagan, Inc.
    in the United States.

Zoology

• Last known specimens of the Syrian wild ass die.

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Arthur Holly Compton, Charles Thomson Rees Wilson
  • Chemistry – Heinrich Otto Wieland
  • Medicine – Julius Wagner-Jauregg
• Charles Sherrington
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: William Whitehead Watts

Births

• January 13 –
  molecular biologist; recipient of Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
  .
• January 29 – Lewis Urry (died 2004), Canadian inventor of the long-lasting alkaline battery.
• March 9 –
  Julian Tudor Hart (died 2018), British physician
  .
• March 16 –
  Vladimir Komarov (died 1967), Russian cosmonaut on Soyuz 1
  .
• April 4 – Frederick I. Ordway III (died 2014), American space scientist.
• April 10 – Marshall Warren Nirenberg (died 2010), American biochemist and geneticist; recipient of Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• April 18 –
  virologist
  and microbiologist-epidemiologist.
• April 19 – Martin Wood (died 2021), English applied physicist.
• April 26 –
  developmental biologist
  .
• April 29 – Walter Thirring (died 2014), Austrian mathematical physicist.
• May 26 – Endel Tulving, Estonian-Canadian experimental psychologist, cognitive neuroscientist.
• June 10 –
  astrophysicist
  .
• June 21 – Ye Shuhua, Chinese astronomer.
• June 22 – Karl Schügerl (died 2018), Hungarian chemical engineer.
• July 2 –
  palaeontologist
  .
• July 29 – Gerald Westbury (died 2014), English cancer surgeon.
• August 2 – Gabriel Horn (died 2012), English biologist.
• August 9 – Marvin Minsky (died 2016), American computer scientist, pioneer of artificial intelligence.
• September 4 –
  cognitive scientist
  .
• October 27 – Mikhail Postnikov (died 2004), Soviet mathematician, known for his work in algebraic and differential topology.
• November 12 – Yutaka Taniyama (suicide 1958), Japanese mathematician.
• November 13 – Billy Klüver (died 2004), Swedish-American engineer, co-founded Experiments in Art and Technology
• November 20 – Kikuo Takano (died 2006), Japanese poet and mathematician.
• November 27 – Arnold Clark (died 2017), Scottish inventor.
• December 9 – Ralph Kohn (died 2016), German-born British medical scientist
• December 23 –
  African American physician
  .
• December 27 – George Streisinger (died 1984), Hungarian-born molecular biologist, first person to clone a vertebrate.

Deaths

• January 19 –
  Carl Gräbe (born 1841), German chemist
  .
• February 9 –
  paleontologist
  .
• March 4 – Ira Remsen (born 1846), American chemist.
• March 27 –
  malacologist
  and explorer.
• May 2 –
  physiologist
  .
• August 3 – Edward B. Titchener (born 1867), American structuralist psychologist.
• August 13 – James Oliver Curwood (born 1887), American novelist and conservationist.
• September 14 – Julian Sochocki (born 1842), Polish-born mathematician.
• October 2 – Svante Arrhenius (born 1859), Swedish winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
• November 11 –
  plant physiologist
  and geneticist.
• December 2 –
  mineralogist
  .
• December 24 – Vladimir Bekhterev (born 1857), Russian psychologist.

References