1913 in science

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The year 1913 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

• February 9 – Meteor procession of February 9, 1913 visible along a great circle arc 6,040 miles (9,720 km) across the Americas. Astronomer Clarence Chant concludes that the source was a small, short-lived natural satellite of the Earth.
• Berlin Observatory moves to Babelsberg.

Biology

• William Temple Hornaday publishes Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation.

Chemistry

• February – Daniel J. O'Conor and Herbert A. Faber file for a United States patent on the composite plastic laminate Formica.
• Elmer McCollum and Marguerite Davis at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and Lafayette Mendel and Thomas Burr Osborne at Yale University independently discover Vitamin A.
• Protactinium is first identified by Oswald Helmuth Göhring and Kasimir Fajans.
• Henry Moseley shows that nuclear charge is the real basis for numbering the elements and discovers a systematic relation between wavelength and atomic number by using x-ray spectra obtained by diffraction in crystals. Frederick Soddy proposes that isotopes (a term which he introduces) may have differing atomic weights.
• J. J. Thomson shows that charged subatomic particles can be separated by their mass-to-charge ratio, the technique known as mass spectrometry.
• The Bergius process was first developed and patented by German chemist Friedrich Bergius in 1913.

Climatology

• Charles Fabry and Henri Buisson discover the ozone layer.

Geology

• Albert A. Michelson measures tides in the solid body of the Earth

History of science

• March – First publication of Isis, the journal of the history of science edited by George Sarton, in Ghent.
• Pierre Duhem begins publication of Le Système du Monde: Histoire des Doctrines cosmologiques de Platon à Copernic in Paris.

Mathematics

• March 6 – First publication of Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics, a polemical review of Peter Coffey's The Science of Logic written in 1912 when Wittgenstein was an undergraduate studying with Bertrand Russell.
• Publication of the 3rd volume of Principia Mathematica by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, one of the most important and seminal works in mathematical logic and philosophy.
• Émile Borel first states the infinite monkey theorem in the way it will subsequently become known.

Physics

• William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg work out the Bragg condition for strong X-ray reflection.
• Niels Bohr presents his quantum model of the atom.
• William Crookes creates sunglass lenses.
• Robert Millikan measures the fundamental unit of electric charge.
• Georges Sagnac demonstrates the Sagnac effect, showing that light propagates at a speed independent of the speed of its source.
• Johannes Stark demonstrates that strong electric fields will split the Balmer spectral line series of hydrogen.

Physiology and medicine

• Nikolay Anichkov first demonstrates the significance and role of cholesterol in atherosclerosis pathogenesis.
• Albert Schweitzer sets up the Albert Schweitzer Hospital at Lambaréné in French Equatorial Africa.

Psychology

• John B. Watson publishes the article "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It" — sometimes called "The Behaviorist Manifesto".

Technology

• April 29 – Swedish American engineer Gideon Sundback of Hoboken, New Jersey, patents the all-purpose zipper.
• May 26 (May 13 O.S.) – Igor Sikorsky flies the world's first 4-engine fixed-wing aircraft, his Bolshoi Baltisky biplane, near Saint Petersburg.
• August – Invention of stainless steel by Harry Brearley in Sheffield, England (concurrent with the invention of another type in the United States by Elwood Haynes).
• French inventor René Lorin patents the ramjet, but attempts to build a prototype fail due to inadequate materials.

Publications

• Die Naturwissenschaften first published by Die Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e. V.
• Journal of Ecology first published.

Awards

• Nobel Prize
  • Physics – Heike Kamerlingh Onnes
  • Chemistry – Alfred Werner
  • Medicine – Charles Richet

Births

• January 31 – Murray Bowen (died 1990), American psychiatrist and pioneer of family therapy.
• February 28 – David Hawkins (died 2002), American philosopher of science and mathematics and science educator.
• March 2 – Georgy Flyorov (died 1990), Russian physicist who is known for his discovery of the spontaneous fission.
• March 26 – Paul Erdős (died 1996), Hungarian mathematician.
• April 20 – Willi Hennig (died 1976), German entomologist and pioneer of cladistics.
• April 30 – Genevieve Grotjan Feinstein (died 2006), American mathematician and cryptanalyst.
• May 13 – Erich Lackner (died 1992), Austrian-born German civil engineer.
• June 10 – Edward Abraham (died 1999), English biochemist.
• August 20 – Roger Wolcott Sperry (died 1994), American neuropsychologist, neurobiologist and Nobel laureate.
• August 22 – Bruno Pontecorvo (died 1993), Italian-born physicist.
• October 10 – Remy Chauvin (died 2009), French biologist and entomologist.
• November 12 – Joel Elkes (died 2015), Königsberg-born pharmacologist.

Deaths

• January 2 – Léon Teisserenc de Bort (born 1855), French meteorologist.
• January 18 – George Alexander Gibson (born 1854), Scottish physician and geologist.
• February 20 – Robert von Lieben (born 1878), Austrian physicist.
• April 14 – Carl Hagenbeck (born 1844), German zoologist.
• April 26 – Sigismond Jaccoud (born 1830), Swiss-born French physician.
• May 28 – John Lubbock (born 1834), English naturalist and archaeologist.
• August 3 – Josephine Cochrane (born 1839), American inventor of the first commercially successful dishwasher.
• September 29 – Rudolf Diesel (born 1858), German mechanical engineer (lost overboard this night).
• November 7 – Alfred Russel Wallace (born 1823), British biologist.