1914 in science

The year 1914 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

• Sinope, the outermost known moon of Jupiter, is discovered by Seth Barnes Nicholson at Lick Observatory.
• A 76 cm refracting telescope is built at Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is the fifth largest refractor in the world.
• Robert Goddard begins building rockets.
• Walter Sydney Adams determines an incredibly high density for Sirius B.

Biology and medicine

• March 27 – Belgian surgeon Albert Hustin makes the first successful non-direct blood transfusion, using anticoagulants.
• August 1 – Swiss National Park (Parc Naziunal Svizzer) established in the Engadin region of Switzerland.
• September 1 – Martha, the last known passenger pigeon, dies, in the Cincinnati Zoo.
• November 6 – Jacques Loeb publishes a paper on artificial parthenogenesis in sea urchins.^[1]
• November 26 – Karl von Frisch publishes his first significant paper on honey bee behavior, "Der Farbensinn und Formensinn der Biene".^[2]
• Julian Huxley publishes The Courtship Habits of the Great Crested Grebe, a key text in ethology.
• John Joly develops a method of extracting radium and applying it in radiotherapy.^[3]
• Edward Calvin Kendall isolates thyroxine.
• Morris Simmonds first reports hypopituitarism.^[4]
• Oxymorphone, a powerful narcotic analgesic closely related to morphine, is first developed in Germany.^[5]

Mathematics

• In analysis of the Riemann hypothesis
  • G. H. Hardy shows there are infinitely many zeros on the critical line.^[6] Harald Bohr and Edmund Landau show that for any positive ε, all but an infinitely small proportion of zeros lie within a distance ε of the critical line;^[7] and R. J. Backlund introduces a better method of checking the zeros.
  • J. E. Littlewood shows that the prime number theorem underestimates the cumulative total of primes.^[8]

Mineralogy

• Pascoite is first described.^[9]

Physics

• April 24 – James Franck and Gustav Hertz's experiment on electron collisions showing internal quantum levels of atoms is presented to the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft.
• October 1 – Edgar Buckingham introduces use of the symbol "π_i" for the dimensionless variables (or parameters) in what becomes known as the Buckingham π theorem, significant to dimensional analysis.^[10]
• Ernest Rutherford suggests that the positively charged atomic nucleus contains protons.

Technology

• February 3 – Willis Carrier patents an air conditioner in the United States.
• September 5 – British Royal Navy scout cruiser HMS Pathfinder (1904) is sunk by German submarine U-21 in the Firth of Forth (Scotland), the first ship ever to be sunk by a locomotive torpedo fired from a submarine.
• November 3 – Polly Jacob patents a backless bra in the United States.
• Kodak introduce the Autographic system.

Other events

• October 23 – Manifesto of the Ninety-Three proclaimed in Germany.

Awards

• Nobel Prize
  • Physics – Max von Laue
  • Chemistry – Theodore William Richards
  • Medicine – Robert Bárány

Births

• February 5 – Alan Hodgkin (died 1998), English physiologist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1963).
• February 22 – Renato Dulbecco (died 2012), Italian-born virologist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1975).
• March 5 – He Zehui (died 2011), Chinese nuclear physicist.
• March 8 – Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich (died 1987), Russian astrophysicist.
• March 25 – Norman Borlaug (died 2009), American agronomist, humanitarian and Nobel laureate.
• May 19 – Max Perutz (died 2002), Austrian-born biologist.
• June 3 – Ignacio Ponseti (died 2009), Menorcan-born pediatric orthopedist.
• June 4 – Alec Skempton (died 2001), English pioneer of soil science and engineering historian.
• July 15 – Gavin Maxwell (died 1969), Scottish naturalist.
• July 24 – Frances Oldham Kelsey (died 2015), Canadian pharmacologist.
• August 13 – Grace Bates (died 1996), American mathematician.
• September 5 – Nicanor Parra (died 2018), Chilean poet and physicist.
• October 2 – Jack Parsons (died 1952), American rocket engineer and occultist.
• October 6 – Thor Heyerdahl (died 2002), Norwegian ethnographer and explorer, leader of the Kon-Tiki expedition.
• October 14 – Raymond Davis, Jr. (died 2006), American chemist and physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics (2002).
• October 21 – Martin Gardner (died 2010), American writer on recreational mathematics.
• October 28 – Jonas Salk (died 1995), American medical researcher.
• December 20 – Mary Helen Wright Greuter (died 1997), American historian of astronomy.
• December 31 – Mary Logan Reddick (died 1966), African American neuroembryologist.

Deaths

• January 24 – Sir David Gill (born 1843), Scottish astronomer.
• March 19 – Giuseppe Mercalli (born 1850), Italian volcanologist.
• March 30 – John Henry Poynting (born 1852), English physicist, discovered the Poynting–Robertson effect and developed the Poynting vector.
• April 16 – George William Hill (born 1838), American astronomer.
• April 26 – Eduard Suess (born 1831), German geologist and ecologist.
• May 27 – Joseph Swan (born 1828), English physicist.
• November 5 – August Weismann (born 1834), German evolutionary biologist.
• November 10 – Lydia Shackleton (born 1828), Irish botanical artist.
• December 24 – John Muir (born 1838), Scottish American geologist and ecologist, founder of the Sierra Club.
• Nadezhda Olimpievna Ziber-Shumova, Russian chemist.

References