1915 in science
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The year 1915 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Contents |
[edit] Astronomy
- Pluto is photographed for the first time but not recognized as a planet.
- Einstein's new theory of general relativity is used to explain Mercury's strange motions that baffled Urbain Le Verrier.
[edit] Earth sciences
- Alfred Wegener proposes the theory of Pangea.
[edit] Life sciences
- A global pandemic of Encephalitis lethargica begins.[1][2][3]
- Walter Bradford Cannon coins the term fight or flight to describe an animal's response to threats.[4]
- Thomas Hunt Morgan, demonstrates non-inherited genetic mutation (in Drosophila melanogaster), undermining the conceptual basis of eugenics.[5]
[edit] Mathematics
- Emmy Noether proves her theorem that any differentiable symmetry of the action of a physical system has a corresponding conservation law.[6]
- Wacław Sierpiński describes the Sierpinski triangle.
[edit] Physics
- Albert Einstein publishes his theory of general relativity.
- Arnold Sommerfeld develops a modified Bohr atomic model with elliptic orbits to explain relativistic fine structure.
[edit] Technology
- February 4 - John G. A. Kitchen patents the reversing rudder.[7]
- September 9 - William Foster & Co. of Lincoln in England complete the first prototype military tank "Little Willie".
- Georges Claude patents the neon discharge tube for use in advertising.
- The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the predecessor of NASA, is founded in the United States.
[edit] Awards
- Nobel Prize
- Physics - Sir William Henry Bragg and Sir William Lawrence Bragg
- Chemistry - Richard Martin Willstätter
- Medicine - not awarded
[edit] Births
- March 15 - Laurent Schwartz (d. 2002), mathematician.
- March 16 - Kunihiko Kodaira (d. 1997), mathematician.
- June 24 - Fred Hoyle (d. 2001), astronomer and science fiction writer.
- November 30 - Henry Taube (d. 2005), Nobelaureate in Chemistry (1983).
[edit] Deaths
- April 19 - Sir Thomas Clouston (b. 1840), Scottish psychiatrist.
- May 13 - Morgan Crofton (b. 1826), U.K. mathematician.
- July 22 - Sir Sandford Fleming (b. 1827), Canadian engineer and surveyor known as the "father of time zones".
- August 10 - Henry Moseley (b. 1887), English physicist (killed in action on the Gallipoli Campaign).
- October 11 - Jean Henri Fabre (b. 1823), French entomologist.
- October 15 - Theodor Boveri (b. 1862), German geneticist.
- December 19 - Alois Alzheimer (b. 1864), German neuroscientist.
[edit] References
- ^ synd/3356 at Who Named It?
- ^ von Economo, K. (1917-05-10) "Encepahlitis lethargica". Wiener klinische Wochenschrift 30: pp. 581-585; (1918) Die Encephalitis lethargica. Leipzig; Vienna: Franz Deuticke.
- ^ "Encephalitis lethargica" at Dorland's Medical Dictionary
- ^ Cannon, Walter Bradford (1915). Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage: an Account of Recent Researches into the Function of Emotional Excitement. Appleton.
- ^ Blom, Philipp (2008). The Vertigo Years: Change and Culture in the West, 1900-1914. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. pp. 336–337. ISBN 978-0-7710-1630-1.
- ^ Noether, E. (1918). "Invariante Variationsprobleme". Nachrichten von der Königliche Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. Mathematisch-Physikalische Klasse 1918: 235–257. Reprinted in: Noether, Emmy; Tavel (1971). "Invariant Variation Problems". Transport Theory and Statistical Physics 1 (3): 186–207. arXiv:physics/0503066. Bibcode 1971TTSP....1..186N. doi:10.1080/00411457108231446.
- ^ Wilson, Paul N. (1972). "J. G. A. Kitchen, 1869-1940, and his inventions". Newcomen Society Transactions 45: 15–43.
