1928 in science

The year 1928 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

List of years in science (table)
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Anthropology

• American anthropologist Margaret Mead publishes Coming of Age in Samoa, "a psychological study of primitive youth for Western civilization".

Archaeology

• The old Canaanite city of Ugarit is rediscovered.

Biology

• January – Frederick Griffith reports the results of Griffith's experiment, indirectly proving the existence of DNA.[1][2]
• September 3 – Alexander Fleming, at St Mary's Hospital, London, accidentally rediscovers the antibiotic Penicillin, forgotten since Ernest Duchesne's original discovery in 1896.[3][4]
• American biogerontologist Raymond Pearl publishes his Rate of Living Hypothesis, proposing that lifespan is shorter in animals with faster metabolisms.[5]

Chemistry

• The Diels-Alder reaction was first described by German chemists Otto Diels and Kurt Alder in 1928.
• Bubble gum is invented by Walter Diemer in the United States.

Computer science

• April – Leslie Comrie publishes an article "On the Construction of Tables by Interpolation", describing the use of punched card equipment for interpolating tables of data, and becomes the first to use such equipment for scientific calculations, using Fourier synthesis to compute the principal terms in the motion of the Moon for 1935–2000.

History of science

• Florian Cajori begins publication of A History of Mathematical Notations.

Mathematics

• David Hilbert and Wilhelm Ackermann publish Grundzüge der theoretischen Logik, a pioneering elementary text in first-order logic stating the Entscheidungsproblem.[6]
• John von Neumann publishes Zur Theorie der Gesellschaftsspiele, a text in game theory.

Medicine

• October 12 – An 'iron lung' medical ventilator designed by Philip Drinker and Louis Agassiz Shaw, Jr., is used for the first time, at Boston Children's Hospital in the United States for treatment of poliomyelitis.
• Dementia pugilistica is first described by forensic pathologist Dr. Harrison Stanford Martland, chief medical examiner of Essex County, New Jersey.[7]

Physics

• February 28 – C. V. Raman and K. S. Krishnan discover Raman scattering in liquids.[8]
• Paul Dirac proposes the Dirac equation as a relativistic equation of motion for the wavefunction of the electron,[9] leading him to predict the existence of the positron, the electron's antiparticle.[10]

Technology

• February 8 – British inventor John Logie Baird broadcasts a transatlantic television signal from London to Hartsdale, New York.[11]
• June 11 – Hungarian inventor Kálmán Tihanyi files patents in Germany, the United Kingdom and France for a cathode ray television transmission system.[12]
• July 3
  • British inventor John Logie Baird demonstrates the world's first color television transmission, using scanning discs.[13]
  • Ulster-born engineer Harry Ferguson obtains a British patent for his three-point linkage for tractors.[14]
• July 7 – The first machine-sliced and machine-wrapped loaf of bread is sold in Chillicothe, Missouri, using Otto Frederick Rohwedder's technology.
• September 3 – Philo Farnsworth demonstrates to the Press the world's first working all-electronic television system, employing electronic scanning in both the pickup and display devices.[15][16]
• December – Completion of the Maurzyce Bridge near Łowicz in central Poland, the world's first road bridge of wholly welded construction, designed by Stefan Bryła.[17][18][19]
• The concrete pump is invented by German Max Giese.
• Magnetic tape is invented by German Fritz Pfleumer.

Publications

• Arthur Eddington publishes the popular text The Nature of the Physical World in the United Kingdom, including a statement of the infinite monkey theorem.[20]

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Owen Willans Richardson
  • Chemistry – Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus
  • Medicine – Charles Jules Henri Nicolle

Births

• January 4 – Henry T. Lynch, American cancer geneticist.
• January 12 – Gerald Russell (died 2018), British psychiatrist.
• February 14 – Sergey Kapitsa, Russian physicist and demographer (died 2018)
• February 18 – John Ostrom (died 2005), American paleontologist.
• March 8 – Gerald Bull (killed 1990), Canadian ballistics engineer.
• March 28 – Alexander Grothendieck (died 2014), German-born French mathematician, pioneer of modern algebraic geometry.
• April 6 – James Watson, American geneticist.
• April 20 – Charles David Keeling (died 2005), American atmospheric chemist, geochemist and oceanographer.
• April 29 – Heinz Wolff (died 2017), German-born British bioengineer and science populariser.
• May 2 – Hans Trass, Estonian ecologist and botanist (died 2017)
• May 4 – Bill Mollison (died 2016), Australian biologist, pioneer of permaculture.
• May 23 – Jean E. Sammet (died 2017), American computer programmer.
• May 26 – Jack Kevorkian (died 2011), American pathologist, advocate of euthanasia.
• June 13 – John Forbes Nash, Jr. (died 2015), American mathematician, winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
• June 28 – Harold Evans, English newspaper editor.
• July 23 – Vera Rubin, née Cooper (died 2016), American astronomer.
• September 7 – Donald Henderson (died 2016), American epidemiologist.
• October 7 – Lorna Wing, née Tolchard (died 2014), English psychiatrist.
• October 25 – Peter Naur (died 2016), Danish data scientist.
• October 26 – Erich Kukk (died 2017), Estonian phycologist and conservationist
• November 22 – Bill Chaloner (died 2016), English palaeobotanist.
• December 26 – Martin Cooper, American "father of the mobile phone".
• Wu Xinzhi, Chinese paleoanthropologist.

Deaths

• February 4 – Hendrik Lorentz (born 1853), Dutch physicist and Nobel laureate.
• March 19 – David Ferrier (born 1843), Scottish-born neurologist.
• March 21 – E. Walter Maunder (born 1851), English astronomer.
• May 21 – Hideyo Noguchi (born 1876), Japanese bacteriologist.
• August 30 – Wilhelm Wien (born 1864), German physicist.
• October 29 – John Macintyre (born 1857), Scottish laryngologist and pioneer radiographer.

References

1. Griffith, Fred. (January 1928). "The Significance of Pneumococcal Types". Journal of Hygiene. Cambridge University Press. 27 (2): 113–159. doi:10.1017/S0022172400031879. JSTOR 4626734. PMC 2167760. PMID 20474956.
2. Downie, A. W. (1972). "Pneumococcal transformation – a backward view: Fourth Griffith Memorial Lecture" (PDF). Journal of General Microbiology. 73 (1): 1–11. doi:10.1099/00221287-73-1-1. PMID 4143929. Retrieved 2011-11-30.
3. "Culture shock will highlight penicillin discovery" (PDF) (Press release). London: Royal Society of Chemistry. 2003-09-02. Retrieved 2011-11-30.
4. Duchesne 1897, Antagonism between molds and bacteria. An English translation by Michael Witty. Fort Myers, 2013. ASIN B00E0KRZ0E and B00DZVXPIK.
5. Pearl, Raymond (1928). The Rate of Living, Being an Account of Some Experimental Studies on the Biology of Life Duration. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
6. Hendricks, Vincent; et al., eds. (2004). First-order logic revisited. Logische Philosophie, 12. Berlin: Logos Verlag. ISBN 978-3-8325-0475-5.
7. Martland, H. S. (1928). "Punch Drunk". Journal of the American Medical Association. 91 (15): 1103–1107. doi:10.1001/jama.1928.02700150029009.
8. Raman, C. V. (1928). "A new radiation". Indian Journal of Physics. 2: 387–398. Retrieved 2013-04-14.
9. Dirac, P. A. M. (1928-02-01). "The Quantum Theory of the Electron". Proceedings of the Royal Society A. 117 (778): 610–624. Bibcode:1928RSPSA.117..610D. doi:10.1098/rspa.1928.0023.
10. Dirac, Paul A. M. (1933-12-12). "Theory of Electrons and Positrons". The Nobel Foundation. Archived from the original on 4 June 2011. Retrieved 2011-06-22.
11. "Transatlantic Television in 1928". Baird Television. Retrieved 2015-09-29. Extract from The New York Times 1928-02-09.
12. Improvements in television apparatus. European Patent Office, Patent No. GB313456. Convention date (Germany): 1928-06-11, UK application: 1928-06-11, published: 1930-11-11, retrieved: 2009-12-25. Archived 2012-02-20.
13. The Hutchinson Factfinder. Helicon. 1999. ISBN 978-1-85986-000-7.
14. No. 320084.
15. "Philo Taylor Farnsworth (1906-1971)". The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco. Archived from the original on 22 June 2011. Retrieved 2011-06-22.
16. Farnsworth, Elma G. (1989). Distant Vision: Romance & Discovery on an Invisible Frontier. Salt Lake City: PemberleyKent. p. 108. ISBN 978-0-9623276-0-5.
17. Chen, Wai-Fah; Duan, Lian (2013). Handbook of International Bridge Engineering. CRC Press. pp. 600–01. ISBN 978-1-4398-1029-3.
18. Pescatore, Jean-Pierre; Borgeot, Jean-Henri (2010). "Chapter 10: Welding Steel Structures". In Blondeau, Regis (ed.). Metallurgy and mechanics of welding: processes and industrial application. John Wiley & Sons. p. 359. ISBN 9780470393895.
19. Wojdyga, Piotr (2009). "Mosty firmy K. Rudzki i S-ka" [Bridges of K. Rudzki and Co.] (pdf). Rocznik Mińsko Mazowiecki. 2009 (17): 63–74. ISSN 1232-633X. Retrieved 2013-11-07.
20. "Various works by (and about) Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, which are very difficult to obtain elsewhere". Retrieved 2012-05-31.