1939 in science

The year 1939 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

• Robert Oppenheimer
  jointly predicts two new types of celestial object:
  • With George Volkoff, he calculates the structure of neutron stars.^[1]
  • With Hartland Snyder, he predicts the existence of what will come to be called black holes.^[2]

Biology

• Autumn – DDT's properties as an insecticide are discovered by Paul Müller of Geigy.^[3]

Cartography

• Vladimir V. Kavrayskiy.^[4]

• January 7 – French physicist
  last chemical element first discovered in nature, as a decay product of ²²⁷Ac.^[5]
• April 30 – Nylon fabric is first introduced to the general public at the New York World's Fair.
• July – Edward Adelbert Doisy of Saint Louis University publishes the chemical structure of vitamin K.^[6]
• covalent bonding and ionic bonding as explained through electronegativity, and resonance as a means to explain, among other things, the structure of benzene.^[7]

• September 4 –
  Government Code and Cypher School, Bletchley Park.^[8]
• October –
  Atanasoff–Berry Computer at Iowa State University.^[9]
• Publication of
  proto-hypertext collective memory machine which he soon afterwards calls 'memex
  '.

• Cornelis de Waard begins to publish the Journaal of Isaac Beeckman.
• Philosopher and historian
  modern science during the early modern period, from the late Renaissance to the late 18th century.^[10]
• National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty
  .

• Richard von Mises poses the birthday problem in probability.^[11]

Physics

• January–February – Discovery of nuclear fission is announced independently by Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner.^[12][13][14] On January 26, Niels Bohr reports the splitting of the uranium nucleus with a release of two hundred million electron volts of energy to a conference on the campus of George Washington University in Washington, D.C.^[15]
• August 2 – The
  atomic bomb
  . It is delivered on October 11.
• October 21 – First meeting of the
  Advisory Committee on Uranium under Lyman James Briggs, authorised by President Roosevelt to oversee neutron
  experiments.

• neutrons from a particle accelerator to treat a patient with leukemia
  .
• Drs
  transfusion reaction and hemolytic disease of the newborn in its most severe form.^[16]
• Maudsley Hospital moves to an evacuated school in north London as the Mill Hill Emergency Hospital where treatment of combat stress is pioneered.
• Intramedullary rod is first used by German Gerhard Küntscher.

Technology

• January 1 – Hewlett-Packard is founded as an electronics company in Palo Alto, California.
• January 11 – First flight of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning in the United States.
• August 27 – Flying the Heinkel He 178, Erich Warsitz makes the first flight entirely on turbojet power (the HeS 3 jet engine).
• November 1–2 –
  Secret Intelligence Service
  .
• December 29 – First flight of the Consolidated XB-24 "
  Liberator
  " bomber prototype in the United States.
• Homer Dudley and Robert Riesz of Bell Labs in the United States publicly demonstrate the Voder (voice operating demonstrator) speech synthesis machine.
• Kirlian photography is invented by Semyon Kirlian.
• American industrial psychologist Fritz Roethlisberger, with William J. Dickson, publishes Management and the Worker: an account of a research program conducted by the Western Electric Company, Hawthorne works, Chicago.

Events

• November 6 – Sonderaktion Krakau: The Gestapo arrests scientists from the Jagiellonian University and other institutions in Kraków, Poland; on November 27 they are sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Ernest Lawrence
  • Lavoslav Ruzicka
  • Medicine – Gerhard Domagk

Births

• January 20 – Chandra Wickramasinghe, Ceylonese-born British astronomer.
• January 22 – Helmut Rauch, Austrian physicist (died 2019)
• April 17 – Jan Hoem, Norwegian population scientist (died 2017)
• May 12 – Chuck Hull, American inventor, pioneer of 3D printing.
• May 13 -
  Brian J Ford
  , British biologist, broadcaster, writer and lecturer.
• May 18 – Peter Grünberg (died 2018), German physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
• May 19 – Dick Scobee (killed 1986), American astronaut.
• June 26 –
  pathologist and pioneer of tissue engineering
  .
• June 28 –
  Prozac
• August 12 – David King, South African-born British physical chemist.
• August 19 – Alan Baker (died 2018), English mathematician.
• September 9 – John Dwyer, Australian public health practitioner.
• September 24 – Jacques Vallée, French ufologist.
• October 7
  • John Hopcroft, American theoretical computer scientist.
  • Harry Kroto (died 2016), English organic chemist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
• October 10 – Neil Sloane, Welsh-born American mathematician.
• November 7 – Barbara Liskov, American computer scientist, Turing Award winner.
• November 11 – Alf Adams, English physicist.
• November 18 – John O'Keefe, American-born British neuroscientist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Deaths

• February 4 – Edward Sapir (born 1884), American anthropological linguist.
• February 12 – S. P. L. Sørensen (born 1868), Danish chemist.
• March 6
  • Cuthbert Hilton Golding-Bird (born 1848), English surgeon.
  • botanist
    .
• April 26 – Anne Walter Fearn (born 1867), American physician.^[17]
• May 14 – Fanny Searls (born 1851), American botanist.^[18]
• July 15 – Eugen Bleuler (born 1857), Swiss psychiatrist.
• September 23 –
  psychoanalyst
  .
• October 7 –
  neurosurgeon
  .

References