1913 in science

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The year 1913 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

• February 9 – Meteor procession of February 9, 1913 visible along a great circle arc 6,040 miles (9,720 km) across the Americas. Astronomer Clarence Chant concludes that the source was a small, short-lived natural satellite of the Earth.^[1][2]
• Berlin Observatory moves to Babelsberg.

Chemistry

• February – Daniel J. O'Conor and Herbert A. Faber file for a United States patent on the composite plastic laminate Formica.^[3]
• Elmer McCollum and Marguerite Davis at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and Lafayette Mendel and Thomas Burr Osborne at Yale University independently discover Vitamin A.^[4]
• Protactinium is first identified by Kasimir Fajans and O. H. Göhring.
• Henry Moseley shows that nuclear charge is the real basis for numbering the elements and discovers a systematic relation between wavelength and atomic number by using x-ray spectra obtained by diffraction in crystals.^[5] Frederick Soddy proposes that isotopes (a term which he introduces) may have differing atomic weights.^[6]
• J. J. Thomson shows that charged subatomic particles can be separated by their mass-to-charge ratio, the technique known as mass spectrometry.^[7]

Climatology

• Charles Fabry and Henri Buisson discover the ozone layer.

Geology

• Albert A. Michelson measures tides in the solid body of the Earth

History of science

• Pierre Duhem begins publication of Le Système du Monde: Histoire des Doctrines cosmologiques de Platon à Copernic in Paris.

Mathematics

• March 6 – First publication of Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics, a polemical review of Peter Coffey's The Science of Logic^[8] written in 1912 when Wittgenstein was an undergraduate studying with Bertrand Russell.
• Publication of the 3rd volume of Principia Mathematica by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, one of the most important and seminal works in mathematical logic and philosophy.
• Émile Borel first states the infinite monkey theorem in the way it will subsequently become known.^[9]

Physics

• William Henry Bragg and William Lawrence Bragg work out the Bragg condition for strong X-ray reflection.
• Niels Bohr presents his quantum model of the atom.^[10][11][12]
• Robert Millikan measures the fundamental unit of electric charge.
• Georges Sagnac demonstrates the Sagnac effect, showing that light propagates at a speed independent of the speed of its source.^[13][14][15]
• Johannes Stark demonstrates that strong electric fields will split the Balmer spectral line series of hydrogen.

Physiology and medicine

• Nikolay Anichkov first demonstrates the significance and role of cholesterol in atherosclerosis pathogenesis.^[16]
• Albert Schweitzer sets up the Albert Schweitzer Hospital at Lambaréné in French Equatorial Africa.

Psychology

• John B. Watson publishes the article "Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It" — sometimes called "The Behaviorist Manifesto".^[17]

Technology

• April 29 – Swedish American engineer Gideon Sundback of Hoboken, New Jersey, patents the all-purpose zipper.
• May 26 (May 13 O.S.) – Igor Sikorsky flies the world's first 4-engine fixed-wing aircraft, his Bolshoi Baltisky biplane, near Saint Petersburg.^[18][19]
• August – Invention of stainless steel by Harry Brearley in Sheffield, England (concurrent with the invention of another type in the United States by Elwood Haynes).^[20]
• French inventor René Lorin patents the ramjet, but attempts to build a prototype fail due to inadequate materials.^[21]

Publications

• Die Naturwissenschaften first published by Die Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e. V.
• Journal of Ecology first published.

Awards

• Nobel Prize
  • Physics – Heike Kamerlingh Onnes
  • Chemistry – Alfred Werner
  • Medicine – Charles Richet

Births

• January 31 – Murray Bowen (died 1990), American psychiatrist and pioneer of family therapy.
• March 26 – Paul Erdős (died 1996), Hungarian mathematician.
• April 20 – Willi Hennig (died 1976), German entomologist and pioneer of cladistics.
• May 13 – Erich Lackner (died 1992), Austrian-born German civil engineer.
• June 10 – Edward Abraham (died 1999), English biochemist.
• August 20 – Roger Wolcott Sperry (died 1994), American neuropsychologist, neurobiologist and Nobel laureate.
• October 10 – Remy Chauvin (died 2009), French biologist and entomologist.
• November 12 – Joel Elkes (died 2015), Königsberg-born pharmacologist.

Deaths

• January 2 – Léon Teisserenc de Bort (born 1855), French meteorologist.
• January 18 – George Alexander Gibson (born 1854), Scottish physician and geologist.
• February 20 – Robert von Lieben (born 1878), Austrian physicist.
• April 14 – Carl Hagenbeck (born 1844), German zoologist.
• April 26 – Sigismond Jaccoud (born 1830), Swiss-born French physician.
• May 28 – John Lubbock (born 1834), English naturalist and archaeologist.
• August 3 – Josephine Cochrane (born 1839), American inventor of the first commercially successful dishwasher.
• September 29 – Rudolf Diesel (born 1858), German mechanical engineer (lost overboard this night).
• November 7 – Alfred Russel Wallace (born 1823), British biologist.

References

1. Chant, C. (1913). "An Extraordinary Meteoric Display". Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. 7: 145–19. Bibcode:1913JRASC...7..145C.
2. O'Keefe, J. A. (1991). "The Cyrillid Shower: Remnant of a Circumterrestrial Ring?". Abstracts of the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. 22: 995. Bibcode:1991LPI....22..995O.
3. "Our Legacy – Early Years". Formica Corporation. Retrieved 2012-06-08.
4. Original papers published in Journal of Biological Chemistry. Rosenfeld, Louis (April 1997). "Vitamine—vitamin: The early years of discovery". Clinical Chemistry. American Association for Clinical Chemistry. 43 (4): 680–685.
5. Weisstein, Eric W. (1996). "Moseley, Henry (1887–1915)". Eric Weisstein's World of Scientific Biography. Wolfram Research Products. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
6. "Frederick Soddy: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1921". Nobel Lectures, Chemistry 1901–1921. Elsevier. 1966. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
7. "Early Mass Spectrometry". A History of Mass Spectrometry. Scripps Center for Mass Spectrometry. 2005. Archived from the original on 2007-03-03. Retrieved 2007-03-26.
8. "Review". The Cambridge Review. 34 (853): 351.
9. Borel, Émile (1913). "Mécanique statistique et irréversibilité". Journal de Physique, 5e série. 3: 189–196.
10. Bohr, N. (1913). "On the Constitution of Atoms and Molecules" (PDF). Philosophical Magazine Series 6. London. 26: 1–25. doi:10.1080/14786441308634955. Retrieved 2012-01-24.
11. Bohr, N. (1913). "Part II – Systems containing only a Single Nucleus" (PDF). Philosophical Magazine. 26: 476–502. doi:10.1080/14786441308634993. Retrieved 2012-01-24.
12. "Niels Bohr: The Nobel Prize in Physics 1922". Nobel Lectures, Chemistry 1922–1941. Elsevier. 1966. Retrieved 2007-03-25.
13. Sagnac, Georges (1913). "The demonstration of the luminiferous aether by an interferometer in uniform rotation". Comptes rendus de l'Académie des sciences. 157: 708–710.
14. Sagnac, Georges (1913). "On the proof of the reality of the luminiferous aether by the experiment with a rotating interferometer". Comptes rendus. 157: 1410–1413.
15. Quintin, M. (1996). "Qui a découvert la fluorescence X ?". Journal de Physique IV. 6 (4). Retrieved 2012-06-21.
16. Anitschkow, N.; Chalatow, S. (1983). "On experimental cholesterin steatosis and its significance in the origin of some pathological processes". Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. 3: 178–182. doi:10.1161/01.ATV.3.2.178. Originally published 1913 in Centralblatt für allgemeine Pathologie und pathologische Anatomie (in German) XXIV: 1-9.
17. Psychological Review 20: pp. 158-177.
18. Sikorsky, Sergei I. (2007). The Sikorsky Legacy. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-7385-4995-8. Retrieved 2012-05-12.
19. Oakes, Elizabeth H., ed. (2007). "Sikorsky, Igor". Encyclopedia of World Scientists (Rev. ed.). Infobase Publishing. p. 667.
20. Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. p. 94. ISBN 0-14-102715-0.
21. Zucker, Robert D.; Biblarz, Oscar (2002). Fundamentals of Gas Dynamics. Wiley. ISBN 0-471-05967-6.