1934 in science

The year 1934 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

• black-body
  radiation in an expanding universe cools but remains thermal.
• Georges Lemaître interprets the cosmological constant as due to a vacuum energy with an unusual perfect fluid equation of state.

Chemistry

• The
  Mulliken scale of chemical element electronegativity is developed by Robert S. Mulliken
  .
• Norman Haworth and Edmund Hirst report the first synthesis of vitamin C.^[1]
• J. D. Bernal and Dorothy Crowfoot first successfully apply the technique of X-ray crystallography to analysis of a biological substance, pepsin.^[2]
• The first commercial
  Dnepropetrovsk
  in the Soviet Union.

History of science and technology

• January 18 – The Iron Bridge in Shropshire, dating from the Industrial Revolution period, becomes an officially scheduled monument in England.
• Lewis Mumford publishes Technics and Civilization.

Mathematics

• Penrose triangle devised.

Physics

• March 25 – Enrico Fermi publishes his discovery of neutron activation of radioactive decay.^[3]
• Sonoluminescence is discovered at the University of Cologne.
• John A. Wheeler describe the Breit–Wheeler process
  .
• Henri Coandă obtains his first patent, in France, on the Coandă effect.

Physiology and medicine

• March 8 – Sodium thiopental, the first intravenous anesthetic, synthesized by Ernest H. Volwiler with Donalee L. Tabern of Abbott Laboratories,^[4] is first administered to human subjects.
• November 1 –
  respiratory droplets and their influence on the transmission of infectious respiratory diseases.^[5]
• Outbreak of "atypical poliomyelitis", strongly resembling what would later be called
  Los Angeles County Hospital.^[6]
• George de Hevesy uses heavy water in one of the first biological tracer experiments, to estimate the rate of turnover of water in the human body.^[7]
• Austrian biochemist Regina Kapeller-Adler develops an innovative early pregnancy test based on the presence of histidine in urine.
• corneal grafting
  restores the sight of a man who had been nearly blind for 27 years.

Technology

• April 3 – Percy Shaw patents the cat's eye road-safety device in Britain.^[8]
• April 18 –
  automobile, designed by André Lefèbvre and Flaminio Bertoni
  .
• April 24 – Laurens Hammond patents the Hammond organ in the United States.^[9]
• The 135 film cartridge is introduced in Germany and the United States with the Kodak Retina camera, making 35mm film easy to use.
• The first commercial electronic
  cathode ray tubes are manufactured by Telefunken
  in Germany.

• Samuel C. Bradford proposes Bradford's law of scattering, an example of Pareto distribution applicable in the bibliometrics of scientific literature and beyond.^[10]
• Karl Popper publishes Logik der Forschung.

Awards

• Nobel Prize
  • Physics: not awarded
  • Harold Clayton Urey
  • William Parry Murphy

Births

• February 15 – Niklaus Wirth (died 2024), Swiss computer scientist.
• March 4 – Janez Strnad, Slovenian physicist.
• March 5 – Daniel Kahneman (died 2024), Israeli-American psychologist, winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
• March 6 – Milton Diamond, American sexologist and professor of anatomy and reproductive biology.
• March 9 – Yuri Gagarin (died 1968), Russian cosmonaut, the first man in space.
• March 14 –
  Eugene Cernan (died 2017), American astronaut
  , the last man to walk on the Moon (1972)
• March 23 – Ludvig Faddeev (died 2017), Russian mathematician and theoretical physicist.
• March 31 – Carlo Rubbia, Italian winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
• April 2 – Paul Cohen (died 2007), American mathematician, winner of the Fields Medal.
• April 3 – Jane Goodall, English primatologist.
• April – Dona Strauss, South African-born mathematician.
• May 21 – Bengt I. Samuelsson, Swedish biochemist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• May 23
  • Robert Moog (died 2005), American pioneer of electronic music.
  • African American
    engineer.
• May 30 – Alexei Leonov (died 2019), Russian cosmonaut, the first man to walk in space.
• July 7 – Robert McNeill Alexander (died 2016), British zoologist, authority on animal locomotion.
• September 21 – David J. Thouless (died 2019), Scottish-born winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
• November 9 – Carl Sagan (died 1996), American astronomer.
• November 27 – Gilbert Strang, American mathematician.

Deaths

• January 6 – Fernand Lataste (born 1847), French zoologist.
• January 14 – Ioan Cantacuzino (born 1863), Romanian microbiologist.
• January 29 – Fritz Haber (born 1868), German chemist.
• February 25 –
  botanist
  .
• April 9 – Oskar von Miller (born 1855), German electrical engineer and founder of the Deutsches Museum.
• April 10 – Cecilia Grierson (born 1859), Argentine physician and reformer.
• April 21 – Carsten Borchgrevink (born 1864), Norwegian Antarctic explorer.
• July 4 – Marie Curie (born 1867), Polish-born French physicist.^[11]
• October 17 – Santiago Ramón y Cajal (born 1852), Spanish winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• September 27 –
  horticulturist
  .
• November 16 – Carl von Linde (born 1842), German refrigeration engineer.
• November 20 – Willem de Sitter (born 1872), Dutch mathematician, physicist and astronomer.
• December 2 – T. H. E. C. Espin (born 1858), English astronomer, scientist and clergyman.
• December 10 – Theobald Smith (born 1859), American bacteriologist.
• December 31 – Cornelia Clapp (born 1859), American marine biologist^[12]
• inventor
  .

References