Loading AI tools
The year 1914 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
- 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.
- 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,[3] a key text in ethology.
- John Joly develops a method of extracting radium and applying it in radiotherapy.[4]
- Edward Calvin Kendall isolates thyroxine.
- Morris Simmonds first reports hypopituitarism.[5]
- Oxymorphone, a powerful narcotic analgesic closely related to morphine, is first developed in Germany.[6]
- T. W. Richards finds variations between the atomic weight of lead from different mineral sources, attributable to variations in isotopic composition due to different radioactive origins.[7][8]
- In analysis of the Riemann hypothesis
- G. H. Hardy shows there are infinitely many zeros on the critical line.[9] 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;[10] 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.[11]
- 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 "πi" for the dimensionless variables (or parameters) in what becomes known as the Buckingham π theorem, significant to dimensional analysis.[13]
- Ernest Rutherford suggests that the positively charged atomic nucleus contains protons.
- 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.
- October 23 – Manifesto of the Ninety-Three proclaimed in Germany.
- February 5 – Alan Hodgkin (died 1998), English physiologist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (1963).[14]
- 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.[15]
- April 7 – Heinz Billing, German physicist and computer scientist (died 2017)
- May 19 – Max Perutz (died 2002), Austrian-born biologist.[16]
- 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.[17]
- 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.[18]
- October 14 – Raymond Davis Jr. (died 2006), American chemist and physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics (2002)[19]
- October 21 – Martin Gardner (died 2010), American writer on recreational mathematics.
- October 28
- Jonas Salk (died 1995), American medical researcher.[20]
- Richard Laurence Millington Synge (died 1994), English chemist, Nobel Prize laureate.[21]
- December 15 – Anatole Abragam, French physicist (died 2011)[22]
- December 20 – Mary Helen Wright Greuter (died 1997), American historian of astronomy.
- December 21 – Frank Fenner (died 2010), Australian virologist and microbiologist.[23]
- December 31 – Mary Logan Reddick (died 1966), African American neuroembryologist.
- 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 15 – Ida Freund (born 1863), Austrian-born British chemist and educator.[24]
- May 27 – Joseph Swan (born 1828), English physicist.[25]
- September 13 – Robert Hope-Jones (born 1859), English-born inventor of the theatre organ (suicide).[26]
- November 5 – August Weismann (born 1834), German evolutionary biologist.[27]
- November 10 – Lydia Shackleton (born 1828), Irish botanical artist.
- November 28 – Johann Wilhelm Hittorf (born 1824), German physicist.[28]
- December 24 – John Muir (born 1838), Scottish American geologist and ecologist, founder of the Sierra Club.
- December 29 – Johannes Ludwig Janson (born 1849), German veterinary scientist.[29]
Wikiwand in your browser!
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Every time you click a link to Wikipedia, Wiktionary or Wikiquote in your browser's search results, it will show the modern Wikiwand interface.
Wikiwand extension is a five stars, simple, with minimum permission required to keep your browsing private, safe and transparent.
