1938 in science

none 1938 science 1938 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 – Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer discovers a Coelacanth, formerly seen only in fossils millions of years old, in a fisherman's catch in South Africa. Last known (captive) specimen of Schomburgk's deer is killed.Ellis Richard Richard Ellis (biologist) No Turning Back: The Life and Death of Animal Species Harper Perennial 2004 New York 311–312 0-06-055804-0 https://archive.org/details/noturningbacklif00elli registration Bawden and Pirie publish the first crystal of a spherical virus, Tomato bushy stunt virus.Bawden F. C. Pirie N. W. 1938 Crystalline Preparations of Tomato Bushy Stunt Virus 2065153 British Journal of Experimental Pathology 19 251 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.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. The history of nylon http://www.caimateriali.org/index.php?id=32 L. Trossarelli Club Alpino Italiano, Centro Studi Materiali e Tecniche 2010 2012-02-28 https://web.archive.org/web/20120425044410/http://www.caimateriali.org/index.php?id=32 2012-04-25 live The first items produced in the new material are toothbrush bristles. November 16 – Lysergic acid diethylamide is first synthesized by Albert Hofmann from ergotamine at the Sandoz Laboratories in Basel.Hofmann Albert Jonathan Ott LSD, My Problem Child McGraw-Hill 1980 978-0-07-029325-0 6251390 OL4100124M Melamine thermosetting resin is developed by American Cyanamid. 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.Talk given by Horst Zuse to the Computer Conservation Society at the Science Museum (London) on 18 November 2010. History of science Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld publish The Evolution of Physics. Mathematics Frank Benford restates the law of distribution of first digits.Frank Benford The Law of Anomalous Numbers Proc. Am. Philos. Soc. 78 4 1938 551–572 984802 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.A. M. Turing Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society Series 2 45 1 1939 161–228 10.1112/plms/s2-45.1.161 21.11116/0000-0001-91CE-3 freeTuring's Princeton Dissertation http://www.princeton.edu/turing/alan/dissertation/ Turing Centennial Celebration 2012 Princeton University 2013-02-05 Medicine June 4–6 – Sigmund Freud and his immediate family leave Vienna for exile in London. March 4 – American biogerontologist Raymond Pearl demonstrates the negative health effects of tobacco smoking.Pearl R. Tobacco Smoking and Longevity 10.1126/science.87.2253.216 Science 87 2253 216–217 1938 17813231 1938Sci....87..216PABC-CLIO 978-0874369670 Cordry Harold V. Tobacco: a reference handbook https://archive.org/details/tobaccoreference0000cord registration Santa Barbara, California Contemporary world issues 2001 August – Dorothy Hansine Andersen describes the characteristic cystic fibrosis of the pancreas and correlates it with the celiac, respiratory and intestinal diseases prominent in the condition, also first hypothesizing that cystic fibrosis is a recessive disorder.Andersen Dorothy Hansine Cystic fibrosis of the pancreas and its relation to celiac disease: a clinical and pathological study American Journal of Diseases of Children 1938 56 2 344–399 10.1001/archpedi.1938.01980140114013 October – Robert Edward Gross becomes the first surgeon successfully to ligate an uninfected patent ductus arteriosus, in Boston.Gross Robert Hubbard John 1939 Surgical Ligation of a Patent Ductus Arteriosus Journal of the American Medical Association 112 8 729 10.1001/jama.1939.02800080049011 0002-9955 Hans Asperger first adopts the term autism in its modern sense in referring to autistic psychopaths in a lecture (in German) on child psychology.Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift 1938 51 1314–7 The psychically abnormal child Asperger H. German 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.Reynolds, L. A. Early Development of Total Hip Replacement Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London 2006 978-085484-111-0 American endocrinologist Henry Turner describes Turner syndrome.Turner, H. H. 1938 A syndrome of infantilism, congenital webbed neck and cubitus valgus Endocrinology 23 5 566–74 10.1210/endo-23-5-566 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.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 1938JOSA...28..215I http://www.opticsinfobase.org/abstract.cfm?URI=josa-28-7-215 2011-09-23 10.1364/JOSA.28.000215 subscription Nuclear magnetic resonance is first described and measured in molecular beams by Isidor Rabi.Rabi, I.I. Zacharias, J.R. Millman, S. Kusch, P. A New Method of Measuring Nuclear Magnetic Moment Physical Review 53 1938 10.1103/PhysRev.53.318 4 1938PhRv...53..318R 318–327 free The Vlasov equation is first proposed for description of plasma by Anatoly Vlasov.A. A. Vlasov On Vibration Properties of an Electron Gas Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics 8 444–70 1938 http://ufn.ru/ru/articles/1967/11/f/ Russian 3 2011-09-23 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 Medicine – 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 – David Baltimore, American biologist, 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 – John Darley, American 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 – Alan Andrew Watson, Scottish 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 Fred Baker, American physician and naturalist (b. 1854) Joseph Strauss, American bridge engineer (b. 1870) June 13 – Beverly Thomas Galloway, American plant pathologist (b. 1863) November 20 – Edwin Hall, American physicist, discoverer of the "Hall effect" (b. 1855) References Category:20th century in science Category:1930s in science