1938 in science
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The year 1938 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Contents |
[edit] Astronomy
- June 28 - A 450-ton meteorite strikes the earth in an empty field near Chicora, Pennsylvania.
[edit] Biology
- December 22 - Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer discovers a Coelacanth, formerly seen only in fossils millions of years old, in a fisherman's catch in South Africa.
- Bawden and Pirie publish the first crystal of a spherical virus, Tomato bushy stunt virus.[1]
[edit] 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.[2] The first items produced in the new material are toothbrush bristles.
- Lysergic acid diethylamide first synthesized by Albert Hofmann from ergotamine.[3]
[edit] Computer science
- Konrad Zuse in Berlin completes his Z1 computer, a floating point binary mechanical calculator with limited programmability, using Boolean logic and reading instructions from perforated 35 mm film.[4]
[edit] Mathematics
- Frank Benford restates the law of distribution of first digits.[5]
[edit] Medicine
- Hans Asperger first adopts the term autism in its modern sense in referring to autistic psychopaths in a lecture (in German) on child psychology.[6]
- Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini discover electroconvulsive therapy
[edit] Physics
- Herbert E. Ives and G. R. Stilwell execute the Ives-Stilwell experiment, showing that ions radiate at frequencies affected by their motion.[7]
- The Vlasov equation is first proposed for description of plasma by Anatoly Vlasov.[8]
[edit] Awards
[edit] Births
- April 3 - John Darley, American social psychologist
- April 25 - Roger Boisjoly, American rocket engineer (d. 2012)
[edit] Deaths
- January 31 - Sir James Crichton-Browne, British psychiatrist (born 1840)
- May 16 - Joseph Strauss, American bridge engineer (born 1870)
[edit] References
- ^ Bawden, F. C.; Pirie, N. W. (1938). British Journal of Experimental Pathology 19: 251.
- ^ 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 2012-03-02. http://www.caimateriali.org/index.php?id=32. Retrieved 2012-02-28.
- ^ Hofmann, Albert (1980). LSD — My Problem Child. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-029325-2. http://www.psychedelic-library.org/child.htm.
- ^ Talk given by Horst Zuse to the Computer Conservation Society at the Science Museum (London) on 18 November 2010.
- ^ Benford, Frank (1938). "The Law of Anomalous Numbers". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 78: 551–572. JSTOR 984802.
- ^ Asperger, H. (1938). "[The psychically abnormal child]" (in German). Wiener klinische Wochenschrift 51: 1314–7.
- ^ Ives, Herbert E.; Stilwell, G. R. (1938). "An Experimental Study of the Rate of a Moving Atomic Clock". Journal of the Optical Society of America 28 (7): 215–19. Bibcode 1938JOSA...28..215I. doi:10.1364/JOSA.28.000215. http://www.opticsinfobase.org/abstract.cfm?URI=josa-28-7-215. Retrieved 2011-09-23.
- ^ Vlasov, A. A. (1938). "[On Vibration Properties of an Electron Gas]" (in Russian). Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics 8 (3): 444–70. http://ufn.ru/ru/articles/1967/11/f/. Retrieved 2011-09-23.
