1938 in science
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The year 1938 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Astronomy
- June 28 – A 450-ton meteorite strikes the Earth in an empty field near Chicora, Pennsylvania, United States.
Biology
- December 22 – fossils millions of years old, in a fisherman's catch in South Africa.
- Last known (captive) specimen of Schomburgk's deer is killed.[1]
- Bawden and Pirie publish the first crystal of a spherical virus, Tomato bushy stunt virus.[2]
Chemistry
- April 6 – Roy J. Plunkett of DuPont accidentally discovers polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon).
- September 20 – The first patents for nylon (first synthesized in 1935) are granted in the name of Wallace Carothers to DuPont.[3] The first items produced in the new material are toothbrush bristles.
- November 16 –
- Melamine thermosetting resin is developed by American Cyanamid.
Computer science
- Boolean logic and reading instructions from perforated 35 mm film.[5]
History of science
- Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld publish The Evolution of Physics.
Mathematics
- Frank Benford restates the law of distribution of first digits.[6]
- Alan Turing completes his Ph.D. thesis, Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals, at Princeton University; it is presented to the London Mathematical Society on June 16.[7][8]
Medicine
- June 4–6 – Sigmund Freud and his immediate family leave Vienna for exile in London.
- March 4 – American
- October – Robert Edward Gross becomes the first surgeon successfully to ligate an uninfected patent ductus arteriosus, in Boston.[11]
- recessive disorder.[12]
- child psychology.[13]
- Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini discover electroconvulsive therapy.
- Philip Wiles of Middlesex Hospital in London carries out a total hip replacement using a stainless-steel prosthesis.[14]
- American endocrinologist Henry Turner describes Turner syndrome.[15]
Physics
- December 17 – Discovery of nuclear fission by Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner and Fritz Strassmann with Otto Robert Frisch.
- Herbert E. Ives and G. R. Stilwell execute the Ives–Stilwell experiment, showing that ions radiate at frequencies affected by their motion.[16]
- Isidor Rabi.[17]
- The Vlasov equation is first proposed for description of plasma by Anatoly Vlasov.[18]
Technology
- László Bíró obtains his first patent for a ballpoint pen, in France.
Publications
- Ștefan Odobleja begins publication of his Psychologie consonantiste in Paris, seen in Romania as originating the study of cybernetics.
Awards
- Nobel Prizes
- Physics – Enrico Fermi
- Chemistry – Richard Kuhn
- Corneille Jean François Heymans
- Copley Medal: Niels Bohr
- Wollaston Medal for geology: Maurice Lugeon
Births
- January 2
- Lynn Conway, American computer engineer
- Farouk El-Baz, Egyptian-American space scientist
- Dana Ulery, American computer scientist
- January 10 – Donald Knuth, American computer scientist and mathematician
- January 28 – Tomas Lindahl, Swedish biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- March 5 – Lynn Margulis, American biologist (d. 2011)
- March 7 – university administrator and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- March 31 – Dennis H. Klatt, American pioneer of speech synthesis (d. 1988)
- April 3 – social psychologist
- April 25 – Roger Boisjoly, American rocket engineer (d. 2012)
- May 11 – Fritz-Albert Popp, German biophysicist
- May 16 – Ivan Sutherland, American computer scientist and Turing Award winner
- June 29 – David Barker, English epidemiologist (d. 2013)
- July 2 – C. Kumar N. Patel, Indian electrical engineer
- July 19 – Jayant Narlikar, Indian astrophysicist
- September 3 – Ryōji Noyori, Japanese chemist, Nobel laureate
- September 17 – Alec Broers, Baron Broers, British electrical engineer
- September 26 – astrophysicist
- September 30 – Alfred Cuschieri, Malta-born laparoscopic surgeon
- October 4 – Kurt Wüthrich, Swiss chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
- October 22 – Michael Berridge, Rhodesian-born British physiologist and biochemist (d. 2020)
- November 7 – Edgardo Gomez, Filipino biologist (d. 2019)
- December 7 – George Hockham, English electrical engineer (d. 2013)
- December 23 – Bob Kahn, American Internet pioneer
Deaths
- January 31 – Sir James Crichton-Browne, Scottish psychiatrist (b. 1840)
- May 3 – Percy Furnivall, English surgeon (b. 1868)
- May 16
- naturalist (b. 1854)
- Joseph Strauss, American bridge engineer (b. 1870)
- June 13 – plant pathologist (b. 1863)
- November 20 – Edwin Hall, American physicist, discoverer of the "Hall effect" (b. 1855)
References
- ISBN 0-06-055804-0.
- PMC 2065153.
- ^ US Patent 2,130,523 Linear polyamides suitable for spinning into strong pliable fibers; US Patent 2,130,947 Diamine dicarboxylic acid salt and US Patent 2,130,948 Synthetic fibers. Trossarelli, L. (2010). "The history of nylon". Club Alpino Italiano, Centro Studi Materiali e Tecniche. Archived from the original on 2012-04-25. Retrieved 2012-02-28.
- ISBN 978-0-07-029325-0.
- Science Museum (London)on 18 November 2010.
- JSTOR 984802.
- .
- ^ "Turing's Princeton Dissertation". Turing Centennial Celebration. Princeton University. 2012. Retrieved 2013-02-05.
- PMID 17813231.
- ISBN 978-0874369670.
- ISSN 0002-9955.
- .
- ^ Asperger, H. (1938). "The psychically abnormal child". Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift (in German). 51: 1314–7.
- ISBN 978-085484-111-0.
- .
- . Retrieved 2011-09-23.
- .
- ^ Vlasov, A. A. (1938). "On Vibration Properties of an Electron Gas". Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics (in Russian). 8 (3): 444–70. Retrieved 2011-09-23.