1948 in science

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The year 1948 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Biology

• August 7 – Teaching and research in Mendelian genetics is prohibited in the Soviet Union in favour of Lysenkoist theories of the inheritance of acquired characteristics.^[1][2]
• October 5 – Delegates to a conference organised by Sir Julian Huxley at Fontainebleau agree to formation of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.^[3]
• November 20 – The Takahē, a flightless bird generally thought to have been extinct for fifty years, is rediscovered by Geoffrey Orbell near Lake Te Anau in the South Island of New Zealand.
• Publication of Fairfield Osborne's Our Plundered Planet, a Malthusian critique of human environmental destruction.^[4][5]

Computer science

• June 21 – World's first working program run on an electronic stored-program computer, the Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine ("Baby") (written by Tom Kilburn).^[6]
• July–October – Claude E. Shannon publishes "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" in Bell System Technical Journal, regarded as a foundation of information theory,^[7] introducing the concept of Shannon entropy and adopting the term Bit.

History of science

• December 17 – The original Wright Flyer goes on display in the Smithsonian Institution.

Medicine and human sciences

• April 7 – The World Health Organization is established by the United Nations.
• July 5 – The National Health Service begins functioning in the United Kingdom, giving the right to universal healthcare, free at point of use.^[8]
• August 30 – Russian scientist Victor Skumin^[9] first describes "cardioprosthetic psychopathological syndrome",^[10] later known as Skumin syndrome,^[11] a form of anxiety suffered by recipients of artificial heart valves.
• In psychology, Bertram Forer demonstrates the Forer effect (that people tend to accept generalised descriptions of personality as uniquely applicable to themselves).
• Kinsey Report, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, is published in the United States.
• Julius Axelrod and Bernard Brodie identify the analgesic properties of acetaminophen.

Meteorology

• March 25 – Meteorologists at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City issue the world's first tornado forecast, for the second of the 1948 Tinker Air Force Base tornadoes.

Physics

• April 1 – Physicists Ralph Asher Alpher and George Gamow publish the Alpher–Bethe–Gamow paper about the Big Bang.^[12]
• Herbert Fröhlich makes a key breakthrough in understanding superconductivity, at the University of Liverpool.^[13]

Technology

• June 18 – Columbia Records unveil the LP records developed by Peter Goldmark of CBS Laboratories.^[14][15][16]

Publications

• First publication of Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine.
• Publication in Britain of the novel No Highway by former aeronautical engineer Nevil Shute, dealing with the effects of metal fatigue on aircraft.

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett
  • Chemistry – Arne Wilhelm Kaurin Tiselius
  • Medicine – Paul Hermann Müller

Births

• March 9 – László Lovász, Hungarian computer scientist.
• April 18 – Yasumasa Kanada, Japanese mathematician.
• June 13 – Nina L. Etkin (died 2009), American anthropologist and biologist.
• June 28 – Kenneth Alan Ribet, American mathematician.
• August 25 – Nicholas A. Peppas, Greek chemical and biomedical engineer.
• August 29 – Robert S. Langer, American biomedical engineer.
• September 2 – Christa McAuliffe, born Sharon Christa Corrigan (died 1986), American astronaut.
• October 29 – Frans de Waal, Dutch primatologist.
• December 30 – Randy Schekman, American cell biologist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• Margaret Allen, American cardiothoracic surgeon.
• Robert Plomin, American-born psychologist.

Deaths

• January 30 – Orville Wright (born 1871), American pioneer aviator.
• May 26 – Sir George Newman (born 1870), English public health physician.
• June 10 – Philippa Fawcett (born 1868), English mathematician.
• June 21 – D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson (born 1860), Scottish biologist.
• December 12 – Marjory Stephenson (born 1885), English biochemist.

References

1. Joravsky, David (1970). The Lysenko Affair. Russian Research Center studies, 61. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-53985-0.
2. Cohen, Barry M. (1965). "The descent of Lysenko". The Journal of Heredity. 56 (5): 229–233.
3. Christoffersen, Leif E. (1994). "IUCN: A Bridge-Builder for Nature Conservation" (PDF). Green Globe YearBook. Retrieved 2011-11-02.
4. Netzley, Patricia (1999). Environmental Literature. California: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 1-57607-000-X.
5. Desrochers, Pierre; Hoffbauer, Christine (2009). "The Post War Intellectual Roots of the Population Bomb: Fairfield Osborne's Our Plundered Planet and William Vogt's Road to Survival in retrospect" (PDF). The Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development. 1 (3): 73–97. Retrieved 2011-12-08.
6. Enticknap, Nicholas (Summer 1998). "Computing's Golden Jubilee". Resurrection. Computer Conservation Society (20). ISSN 0958-7403. Retrieved 2011-11-25.
7. James, Ioan (2009). "Claude Elwood Shannon 30 April 1916 – 24 February 2001". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. pp. 257–265. doi:10.1098/rsbm.2009.0015. Retrieved 2011-10-11.
8. "The Lost Decade Timeline". BBC. Archived from the original on 2006-08-21. Retrieved 2007-09-25.
9. "Professor Victor A. Skumin, D.M.Sci." (in Russian). 2009. Archived from the original on 2012-03-07. Retrieved 2012-01-06.
10. Bendet, Ia. A.; Morozov, S. M.; Skumin, V. A. (1980). Психологические аспекты реабилитации больных после хирургического лечения пороков сердца [Psychological aspects of the rehabilitation of patients after the surgical treatment of heart defects]. Kardiologiia (in Russian). 20 (6): 45–51. PMID 7392405.
11. "Skumin syndrome". Genex (in Russian). Archived from the original on 2012-03-07. Retrieved 2012-01-06.
12. Alpher, R. A.; Bethe, H.; Gamow, G. (1948-04-01). "The Origin of Chemical Elements" (PDF). Physical Review. 73 (7): 803–804. Bibcode:1948PhRv...73..803A. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.73.803. Retrieved 2011-03-10.
13. "Science Places Liverpool". 2008. Retrieved 2011-03-20.
14. Goldmark, Peter (1973). Maverick Inventor: My Turbulent Years at CBS. New York: Saturday Review Press. ISBN 0-8415-0046-0.
15. "Columbia Diskery: CBS Show Microgroove Platters to Press; Tell How It Began". Billboard: 3. June 26, 1948.
16. Marmorstein, Gary (2007). The Label: the Story of Columbia Records. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press. p. 165. ISBN 978-1-56025-707-3.