1909 in science

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The year 1909 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

• Comet Halley first becomes visible on a photographic plate.

Biology

• Danish plant physiologist Wilhelm Johannsen introduces the term "Gene".^[1]

Chemistry

• February 5 – Leo Baekeland announces the creation of the early plastic Bakelite, a hard thermosetting phenol formaldehyde resin, to the American Chemical Society.^[2]
• Summer – Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch first demonstrate the Haber process, the catalytic formation of ammonia from hydrogen and atmospheric nitrogen under conditions of high temperature and pressure.^[3][4]
• The concept of p[H] as a measure of the acidity or basicity of an aqueous solution is introduced by Danish chemist Søren Peder Lauritz Sørensen at the Carlsberg Laboratory.^[5]

Earth sciences

• January 16 – Ernest Shackleton's expedition locates the South Magnetic Pole.^[6]
• April 6 – Robert Peary, Matthew Henson, and four Eskimo explorers come within a few miles of the North Pole.
• October 8 – An earthquake in the Zagreb area leads Andrija Mohorovičić to identify the Mohorovičić discontinuity.

Mathematics

• L. E. J. Brouwer makes a proof of the Brouwer fixed point theorem.^[7]

Medicine

• Brazilian physician and infectologist Carlos Chagas first describes Chagas disease.^{[8][9][10][11]}
• In psychology, Edward B. Titchener makes the first published coinage of the term Empathy as a translation of the German Einfühlungsvermögen.^[12]

Paleontology

• August 30 – Discovery of the Burgess Shale Cambrian fossil site in the Canadian Rockies by paleontologist Charles Walcott of the Smithsonian Institution.
• Excavation of the dinosaur bone beds at what will become Dinosaur National Monument in the Uinta Mountains of the United States by paleontologist Earl Douglass working for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.^[13]

Physics

• Albert Einstein together with Marcel Grossmann starts to develop a theory which would bind metric tensor g_ik, which defines a space geometry, with a source of gravity, that is with mass.
• Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden discover large angle deflections of alpha particles by thin metal foils.
• Ernest Rutherford and Thomas Royds demonstrate that alpha particles are doubly ionized helium atoms.

Technology

• Einar Dessau uses a short-wave radio transmitter becoming the first radio broadcaster.
• Kinemacolor, the first commercial "natural color" system for movies is invented.
• July 23 – White Star Liner RMS Republic (15,400 tons), sinking following a collision off Nantucket, becomes the first ship in history to issue a CQD distress signal, using Marconi wireless telegraphy.^[14][15]
• July 25 – Louis Bleriot is the first man to fly across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air craft.

Events

• June 26 – The Science Museum (London) is established as an institution in its own right.^[16]
• Commencement of fieldwork for the multidisciplinary Clare Island Survey (Ireland), under the direction of Robert Lloyd Praeger.

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Guglielmo Marconi, Karl Ferdinand Braun
  • Chemistry – Wilhelm Ostwald
  • Medicine – Emil Theodor Kocher

Births

• January 5 – Stephen Cole Kleene (died 1994), American mathematician.
• February 9 – Giulio Racah (died 1965), Italian–Israeli mathematician and physicist.
• February 18 – Warren Elliot Henry (died 2001), American physicist.
• April 13 – Stanislaw Ulam (died 1984), Polish American mathematician.
• April 22 – Rita Levi-Montalcini (died 2012), Italian Jewish neurologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• May 7 – Edwin H. Land (died 1991), American inventor and founder of Polaroid.
• September 14 – Peter Scott (died 1989), English conservationist.
• August 1 – Sibyl M. Rock (died 1981), American mathematician.
• November 24 – Gerhard Gentzen (died 1945), German-born mathematician.
• December 11 – Toshiko Yuasa (died 1980), Japanese nuclear physicist.
• December 14 – Edward Lawrie Tatum (died 1975), American geneticist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Deaths

• January 12 – Hermann Minkowski (born 1864), mathematician.
• February 26 – Hermann Ebbinghaus (born 1850), psychologist.
• July 11 – Simon Newcomb (born 1835), astronomer.
• August 14 – William Stanley (born 1829), inventor.
• August 27 – Emil Christian Hansen (born 1842), fermentation physiologist.

References

1. Johannsen, W. (1909). Elemente der exakten Erblichkeitslehre (in German). Jena: Gustav Fischer.
2. "New Chemical Substance" (PDF). The New York Times. 1909-02-06.
3. "Original Patent for Synthesis of Ammonia". European Patent Office. Retrieved 12 April 2011.
4. Bowlby, Chris (2011-04-12). "Fritz Haber: Jewish chemist whose work led to Zyklon B". BBC News. Archived from the original on 12 April 2011. Retrieved 2011-04-12.
5. Sorensen, S. P. L. (1909). "Enzymstudien. II, Über die Messung und die Bedeutung der Wasserstoffionenkonzentration bei enzymatischen Prozessen". Biochemische Zeitschrift. 21: 131–304.
6. "The Magnetic South Pole". Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Magnetics Group, Ocean Bottom Magnetology Laboratory. Retrieved 2011-02-25.
7. Crilly, Tony (2007). 50 Mathematical Ideas you really need to know. London: Quercus. p. 97. ISBN 978-1-84724-008-8.
8. Chagas, C. (1909). "Neue Trypanosomen". Vorläufige Mitteilung Archiv für Schiffs-und Tropenhygiene. 13: 120–2.
9. Redhead, S. A.; Cushion, M. T.; Frenkel, J. K.; Stringer, J. R. (2006). "Pneumocystis and Trypanosoma cruzi: nomenclature and typifications". Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology. 53 (1): 2–11. doi:10.1111/j.1550-7408.2005.00072.x. PMID 16441572.
10. Chagas, C. (1909). "Nova tripanozomiase humana: Estudos sobre a morfolojia e o ciclo evolutivo do Schizotrypanum cruzi n. gen., n. sp., ajente etiolojico de nova entidade morbida do homem [New human trypanosomiasis: Studies about the morphology and life-cycle of Schizotripanum cruzi, etiological agent of a new morbid entity of man]". Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz. 1 (2): 159–218. doi:10.1590/S0074-02761909000200008. ISSN 0074-0276.
11. Kropf, S. P.; Sá, Magali Romero (July 2009). "The discovery of Trypanosoma cruzi and Chagas disease (1908–1909): tropical medicine in Brazil". História, ciências, saúde – Manguinhos. 16 (Suppl 1): 13–34. doi:10.1590/s0104-59702009000500002. PMID 20027916.
12. Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of the Thought-Processes. New York: Macmillan, 1909. "empathy, n.". Oxford English Dictionary online version. Oxford University Press. December 2011. Archived from the original on 2012-02-18. Retrieved 2012-02-16. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
13. Douglass, G. E. (2009). Speak to the Earth and It Will Teach You: The Life and Times of Earl Douglass, 1862–1931. Charleston, S.C.: BookSurge.
14. "Rescue at Sea". The American Experience. PBS. Retrieved 2012-03-22.
15. Flayhart, William H. (2005). Disaster at Sea. W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 206–210.
16. "About Us – History". Science Museum. Archived from the original on 21 July 2010. Retrieved 2010-07-07.