1915 in science

none 1915 science 1915 The year 1915 involved numerous significant events in science and technology, some of which are listed below. Astronomy January – British physicist Sir Joseph Larmor publishes his observations on "The Influence of Local Atmospheric Cooling on Astronomical Refraction".Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 75:205–10. March 19 – Pluto is photographed for the first time but is not classified as a planet. Einstein's new theory of general relativity is used to explain Mercury's strange motions that baffled Urbain Le Verrier. Robert Innes discovers Proxima Centauri, the closest star to Earth after the Sun. Chemistry Alice Ball discovers how to make Chaulmoogra tree oil water-soluble, which makes it usable for patients with leprosy in Hawai'i.Wong Kathleen M. The Trailblazing Black Woman Chemist Who Discovered a Treatment for Leprosy https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-trailblazing-black-woman-chemist-who-discovered-a-treatment-for-leprosy-180979772/ Smithsonian Magazine 2023-12-27 2023-12-11 https://web.archive.org/web/20231211200621/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-trailblazing-black-woman-chemist-who-discovered-a-treatment-for-leprosy-180979772/ live Thomas Lyle Williams produces the mascara Maybelline. Earth sciences May 22 – Lassen Peak, one of the Cascade Volcanoes in Northern California, erupts, sending an ash plume 30,000 feet in the air and devastating the nearby area with pyroclastic flows and lahars. It is the only volcano to erupt in the contiguous United States between 1900 and 1980. Alfred Wegener publishes his theory of Pangea, which he calls Urkontinent.Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane ("The Origin of Continents and Oceans"). Paleontology The new theropod dinosaur genus and species Spinosaurus aegyptiacus is assigned by German paleontologist Ernst Stromer.Stromer E. 1915 Ergebnisse der Forschungsreisen Prof. E. Stromers in den Wüsten Ägyptens. II. Wirbeltier-Reste der Baharije-Stufe (unterstes Cenoman). 3. Das Original des Theropoden Spinosaurus aegyptiacus nov. gen., nov. spec. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/40375081 Abhandlungen der Königlich Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Mathematisch-physikalische Klasse 28 3 1–32 Life sciences January – Mildred Hoge publishes her discovery of the gene (much later identified as PAX6) responsible for development of the eye.Hoge Mildred Another Gene in the Fourth Chromosome of Drosophila The American Naturalist January 1915 49 577 47–49 10.1086/279455 2456099 83865793 https://zenodo.org/record/2400631 2021-07-23 A global pandemic of encephalitis lethargica begins.synd 3356 Trench nephritis is first reported as affecting soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force in Flanders in the British Medical Journal; the name is coined by Nathan Raw.Atenstaedt R. L. August 2006 The medical response to trench nephritis in World War One Kidney International 70 4 635–640 10.1038/sj.ki.5001618 0085-2538 16820794 free Walter Bradford Cannon coins the term fight or flight to describe an animal's response to threats.Walter Bradford Cannon Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage: an Account of Recent Researches into the Function of Emotional Excitement https://archive.org/details/bodilychangesin02canngoog 1915 Appleton Thomas Hunt Morgan, demonstrates non-inherited genetic mutation (in Drosophila melanogaster), undermining the conceptual basis of eugenics.Blom Philipp Philipp Blom The Vertigo Years: Change and Culture in the West, 1900-1914 2008 McClelland & Stewart Toronto 978-0-7710-1630-1 336–337 registration https://archive.org/details/vertigoyearschan0000blom/page/336 Reginald Punnett's Mimicry in Butterflies is published in Cambridge (U.K.) Clara H. Hasse publishes a paper identifying the cause of citrus canker which leads to the development of methods for controlling the disease, saving the citrus crops in the southern United States from being wiped out.In Journal of Agricultural Research. Harding Thomas Swann 1980 https://books.google.com/books?id=jAD9Btw5hd4C&dq=Clara+H.+Hasse&pg=PA324 Two Blades of Grass: A History of Scientific Development in the U.S. Department of Agriculture 324 Ayer Publishing 978-0-405-12547-8 Mathematics Emmy Noether proves her theorem that any differentiable symmetry of the action of a physical system has a corresponding conservation law.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 physics/0503066 10.1080/00411457108231446 1971TTSP....1..186N 119019843 Wacław Sierpiński describes the Sierpinski triangle. Physics August – Ada Hitchins' experimental results indicating that radium is formed by the decay of uranium are published.Soddy Frederick Frederick Soddy Hitchins A. F. R. XVII. The relation between uranium and radium. Part VI. The life-period of ionium Philosophical Magazine 6 August 1915 30 176 209–219 10.1080/14786440808635387 https://zenodo.org/record/1430828 free November 25 – Albert Einstein presents to the Prussian Academy of Sciences the Einstein field equations of general relativity.Einstein Albert 1915-11-25 Die Feldgleichungen der Gravitation Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin 844–847 http://nausikaa2.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/cgi-bin/toc/toc.x.cgi?dir=6E3MAXK4&step=thumb 2006-09-12 2016-10-27 https://web.archive.org/web/20161027044950/http://nausikaa2.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/cgi-bin/toc/toc.x.cgi?dir=6E3MAXK4 dead He abandons his hole argument for general relativity.van Dongen Jeroen 2010 Einstein's Unification Cambridge University Press 9780521883467 23 Arnold Sommerfeld develops a modified Bohr atomic model with elliptic orbits to explain relativistic fine structure. Psychology Danish psychologist Edgar Rubin publishes Synsoplevede Figurer ("Visual Figures") introducing the optical illusion which becomes known as the Rubin vase. Technology January 19 – Georges Claude patents the neon discharge tube for use in advertising. February 4 – John G. A. Kitchen patents the reversing rudder.Paul N. Wilson J. G. A. Kitchen, 1869-1940, and his inventions Transactions of the Newcomen Society 45 1972 15–43 10.1179/tns.1972.002 March 3 – The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the predecessor of NASA, is established in the United States. July 1 – First use of synchronization gear in aerial warfare. August – Brodie helmet patented in the United Kingdom. September 9 – William Foster & Co. of Lincoln, England, complete the first prototype military tank "Little Willie". Max Fleischer invents the rotoscoping film animation process in the United States.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS1hCSsmH1E https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211117/IS1hCSsmH1E 2021-11-17 live The trick that made animation realistic Edwards Phil 2019-12-03 Vox Wolfgang Gaede invents the diffusion pump.1915 Annalen der Physik 46 357–392 Gaede W. 10.1002/andp.19153510304 Die Diffusion der Gase durch Quecksilberdampf bei niederen Drucken und die Diffusionsluftpumpe 3 1915AnP...351..357G https://zenodo.org/record/1447291 William Mills patents, develops and manufactures the Mills bomb, a hand grenade, at the Mills Munition Factory in Birmingham, England.1178092 U.S. copy of the 1915/1916 Mills grenade patent. Dagobert Müller von Thomamühl produces a form of hovercraft. Awards Nobel Prize Physics – Sir William Henry Bragg and Sir William Lawrence Bragg Chemistry – Richard Martin Willstätter Births January 11 – Lucille Farrier Stickel (died 2007), American wildlife toxicologist. February 26 – Wang Daheng (died 2011), Chinese optical physicist. February 28 – Peter Medawar (died 1987), Brazilian-born British biologist, co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1960) for his work in immunology. March 15 – Laurent Schwartz (died 2002), French mathematician. March 16 – Kunihiko Kodaira (died 1997), Japanese mathematician. May 30 – Henry Aaron Hill (died 1979), American fluorocarbon chemist and first African American president of the American Chemical Society. June 15 Thomas Huckle Weller (died 2008), American virologist and co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1954) for his work on polio. Xu Ruiyun (suicide 1969), Chinese mathematician. June 24 – Fred Hoyle (died 2001), English astronomer and science fiction writer. July 19 – Katherine Sanford (died 2005), American cell biologist. July 20 – Matest M. Agrest (died 2005), Russian mathematician and ethnologist July 28 – Charles Hard Townes (died 2015), American physicist and co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics (1964) for developing the maser. October 1 – Jerome Bruner (died 2016), American developmental and educational psychologist. October 12 – H. Basil S. Cooke (died 2018), South African-born Canadian geologist and palaeontologist October 26 – Lu Jiaxi (died 2001), Chinese physical chemist. November 18 – Tang Aoqing (died 2008), Chinese quantum chemist. November 30 – Henry Taube (died 2005), Canadian-born recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1983). December 5 – Ren Xinmin (died 2017), Chinese rocket scientist. December 22 – A. E. Wilder-Smith (died 1995), English-born organic chemist. Deaths February 17 – Stanislaus von Prowazek (born 1875), Bohemian-born parasitologist. April 19 – Sir Thomas Clouston (born 1840), Scottish psychiatrist. March 21 – Ambrosius Hubrecht (born 1853), Dutch zoologist. March 24 – Margaret Lindsay Huggins (born 1848), Irish-born astronomer. May 2 – Clara Immerwahr (born 1870), German chemist (suicide). May 7 – Marie Depage (born 1872), Belgian nurse (died in sinking of the RMS Lusitania). May 13 – Morgan Crofton (born 1826), Irish-born mathematician. July 22 – Sir Sandford Fleming (born 1827), Canadian engineer and surveyor known as the "father of time zones". August 10 – Henry Moseley (born 1887), English physicist (killed in action on the Gallipoli Campaign). September 26 – Tsuruko Haraguchi (born 1886), Japanese psychologist (tuberculosis). October 11 – Jean Henri Fabre (born 1823), French entomologist. October 15 – Theodor Boveri (born 1862), German geneticist. December 19 – Alois Alzheimer (born 1864), German neuroscientist. References Category:20th century in science Category:1910s in science