1937 in science

The year 1937 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

• June 8 – First total solar eclipse to exceed 7 minutes of totality in over 800 years; visible in the Pacific and Peru.

Biology

• September 27 – Last definite record of a Bali tiger shot. ^[1]
• Meredith Crawford first publishes results of the cooperative pulling paradigm, with chimpanzees in the United States. ^[2]
• Jay Laurence Lush publishes the influential textbook Animal Breeding Plans in the United States. ^[3]
• The citric acid cycle is finally identified by Hans Adolf Krebs.

Chemistry

• Carlo Perrier and Emilio Segrè at the University of Palermo confirm discovery of the chemical element which will become known as Technetium. ^{[4] [5] [6]}
• The opioid Methadone is synthesized in Germany by scientists working at Hoechst AG. ^[7]
• Otto Bayer and his coworkers at IG Farben in Leverkusen, Germany, first make polyurethanes.

Computer science

• January – Alan Turing's 1936 paper "On Computable Numbers" first appears in print. ^[8] Alonzo Church's review of it in Journal of Symbolic Logic introduces the term Turing machine.
• Claude Shannon's Master's thesis at MIT demonstrates that electronic application of Boolean algebra could construct and resolve any logical numerical relationship. ^[9]
• Konrad Zuse submits patents in Germany based on his Z1 computer design anticipating von Neumann architecture.

Exploration

• British Graham Land Expedition (1934–1937) concludes its work, having determined that Graham Land is an integral part of the Antarctic Peninsula and not an independent archipelago. ^[10]

Mathematics

• Bruno de Finetti publishes "La Prévision: ses lois logiques, ses sources subjectives" in Annales de l'Institut Henri Poincaré , his most influential treatment of his theorem on exchangeable sequences of random variables. ^[11]
• Hans Freudenthal proves the Freudenthal suspension theorem in homotopy. ^[12]
• Goldberg polyhedron first described. ^[13]

Medicine

• November 2 – English chemist Montague Phillips at May & Baker synthesises sulphapyridine (M&B 693), an early antibiotic which immediately enters animal trials with Middlesex Hospital pathologist Lionel Whitby. ^[14]
• First typhus vaccine by Rudolf Weigl, Ludwik Fleck and Hans Zinsser; influenza vaccine by Anatol Smorodintsev. ^[15]
• Both respirator designed in Australia.
• Italian psychiatrist Amarro Fiamberti is the first to document a transorbital approach to the brain, which becomes the basis for the controversial medical procedure of transorbital lobotomy.
• Publication in the United Kingdom of Dr A. J. Cronin's novel The Citadel , promoting the cause of socialised medicine. ^[16]

Physics

• January – Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen publish a paper denying that gravitational waves can exist. ^[17]
• Eugene Wigner introduces the term isospin . ^[18]

Technology

• February – Hans von Ohain begins ground-testing a turbojet engine.
• April 12 – Frank Whittle ground-tests the first jet engine designed to power an aircraft, at Rugby, England.
• May 28 – Rocker Shovel Loader patent applied for in the United States.
• June 5 – Alan Blumlein is granted a patent for an ultra-linear amplifier. ^[19]
• December 13 – Tomlinson Moseley files the first patent for an electric toothbrush. ^[20]
• Alec Reeves invents pulse-code modulation.

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Clinton Joseph Davisson, George Paget Thomson
  • Chemistry – Walter Haworth, Paul Karrer
  • Medicine – Albert von Szent-Györgyi Nagyrapolt
• Copley Medal – Henry Dale
• Wollaston Medal for geology – Waldemar Lindgren

Births

• January 14 – Leo Kadanoff, American physicist (died 2015)
• January 26 – Igor Aleksander, Croatian computer scientist.
• February 18 – Chen Chuangtian (died 2018), Chinese materials scientist.
• March 16 – Amos Tversky (died 1996), Jewish American cognitive and mathematical psychologist, recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
• April 17 – Don Buchla (died 2016), American electronic engineer, pioneer of sound synthesizers.
• May 9 – Alison Jolly (died 2014), American primatologist.
• May 13 – Trevor Baylis (died 2018), English inventor.
• June 8 – Bruce McCandless II (died 2017), American astronaut.
• June 9 – Harald Rosenthal, German biologist
• June 11 – David Mumford, American mathematician.
• June 21 – Averil Mansfield, English vascular surgeon.
• June 23 – Nicholas Shackleton (died 2006), English Quaternary geologist and paleoclimatologist, recipient of the Vetlesen Prize.
• June 26 – Robert Coleman Richardson (died 2013), American experimental physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
• July 1 – Lydia Makhubu, Swazi chemist.
• July 19 – Bibb Latané, American social psychologist.
• July 26 – Ernest Vinberg (died 2020), Russian mathematician.
• August 2 – Coenraad Bron, Dutch computer scientist (d. 2006)
• September 8 – Edna Adan Ismail, Somali pioneer of pediatrics.
• December 26 – John Horton Conway, English-born mathematician (d. 2020)

Deaths

• January 28 – Arthur Pollen (born 1866), English inventor.
• January 29 – Aleen Cust (born 1868), Irish veterinary surgeon.
• February 5 – Lou Andreas-Salomé (born 1861), German psychoanalyst.
• May 28 – Alfred Adler (born 1870), Austrian psychotherapist.
• June 11 – R. J. Mitchell (born 1895), English aeronautical engineer.
• July 20 – Guglielmo Marconi (born 1874), Italian inventor.
• July 30 – Victor Despeignes (born 1866), French pioneer of radiation oncology.
• October 16 – William Sealy Gosset (born 1876), English statistician.
• October 19 – Ernest Rutherford (born 1871), New Zealand-born British physicist and laureate of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
• November 23 – Jagadish Chandra Bose (born 1858), Bengali physicist.

References

1. "Death of a Bali Tiger". Save The Tiger Fund. Archived from the original on 2008-05-11. Retrieved 2020-03-10.
2. Crawford, Meredith P. (1937). The Coöperative Solving of Problems by Young Chimpanzees. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press.
3. Chapman, Arthur B. (1987). "Jay Laurence Lush". Biographical Memoirs. 57. United States: National Academy of Sciences: 279. Retrieved 2012-01-04.
4. Heiserman, D. L. (1992). "Element 43: Technetium". Exploring Chemical Elements and their Compounds . New York: TAB Books. p.  164. ISBN   978-0-8306-3018-9.
5. Emsley, John (2001). Nature's Building Blocks: an A-Z Guide to the Elements . Oxford University Press. p.  424. ISBN   978-0-19-850340-8.
6. Perrier, C.; Segrè, E. (1947). "Technetium: the Element of Atomic Number 43". Nature . 159 (4027): 24. Bibcode:1947Natur.159...24P. doi:10.1038/159024a0. PMID   20279068. S2CID   4136886.
7. Bockmuhl, M. (1948). "Über eine neue Klasse von analgetisch wirkenden Verbindungen". Ann. Chem. 52: 561.
8. Turing, A. M. (1937). "On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem" . Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society . Series 2. 42: 230–265. doi:10.1112/plms/s2-42.1.230. S2CID   73712 . Retrieved 2017-12-24.
9. Poundstone, William (2005). Fortune's Formula: the Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street. New York: Hill & Wang. ISBN   978-0-8090-4637-9.
10. "British Graham Land Expedition, 1934-37". Cambridge: Scott Polar Research Institute. 2011-03-31. Retrieved 2013-08-13.
11. Crilly, Tony (2007). 50 Mathematical Ideas you really need to know. London: Quercus. p. 128. ISBN   978-1-84724-008-8.
12. Whitehead, George W. (1953). "On the Freudenthal Theorems". Annals of Mathematics . 57 (2): 209–228. doi:10.2307/1969855. JSTOR   1969855. MR   0055683.
13. Goldberg, Michael (1937). "A class of multi-symmetric polyhedra". Tohoku Mathematical Journal . 43: 104–108.
14. Lesch, John (2007). "Chapter 7". The First Miracle Drugs (Illustrated ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-518775-5.
15. Plotkin, S. L.; S. A. (2008). "A short history of vaccination". In Plotkin, Stanley A.; Orenstein, Walter A.; Offit, Paul A. (ed.). Vaccines . Elsevier Health Sciences. p. 8.
16. "An expectant public". 60 years of NHS Scotland. 2008. Archived from the original on 2008-09-28. Retrieved 2011-04-21.
17. Einstein, Albert; Rosen, Nathan (January 1937). "On gravitational waves". Journal of the Franklin Institute . 223 (1). United States: 43–54. doi:10.1016/s0016-0032(37)90583-0. ISSN   0016-0032.
18. Wigner, E. (1937). "On the Consequences of the Symmetry of the Nuclear Hamiltonian on the Spectroscopy of Nuclei". Physical Review . 51 (2): 106–119. Bibcode:1937PhRv...51..106W. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.51.106.
19. GB 496883,"Improvements in or relating to thermionic valve amplifying circuits" 
20. "Electric toothbrush". Google Patents. 1937-12-13. Retrieved 2024-08-26.