1904 (MCMIV) was a leap year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar, the 1904th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 904th year of the 2nd millennium, the 4th year of the 20th century, and the 5th year of the 1900s decade. As of the start of 1904, the Gregorian calendar was 13 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.
Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet was an English polymath active as a mathematician, astronomer, chemist, inventor, experimental photographer who invented the blueprint and did botanical work.
Henry Norris Russell ForMemRS HFRSE FRAS was an American astronomer who, along with Ejnar Hertzsprung, developed the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram (1910). Russel is generally credited for discovering that stars are made primarily of Hydrogen, disproving the previous prevailing view about the composition of stars. However, this discovery was actually first observed and presented by Cecilia Payne in her 1925 doctoral thesis, the findings of which Russel had initially rejected before subsequently concluding that she was right four years later. In 1923, working with Frederick Saunders, he developed Russell–Saunders coupling, which is also known as LS coupling.
The year 1859 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Martin John Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow, is a British cosmologist and astrophysicist. He is the fifteenth Astronomer Royal, appointed in 1995, and was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, from 2004 to 2012 and President of the Royal Society between 2005 and 2010.
Ruth Sophia Padel FRSL FZS is a British poet, novelist and non-fiction author, known for her poetic explorations of migration, both animal and human, and her involvement with classical music, wildlife conservation and Greece, ancient and modern. She is Trustee for conservation charity New Networks for Nature, has served on the board of the Zoological Society of London and was Professor of Poetry at King's College London from 2013 to 2022.
James Harvey Robinson was an American scholar of history who, with Charles Austin Beard, founded New History, a disciplinary approach that attempts to use history to understand contemporary problems, which greatly broadened the scope of historical scholarship in relation to the social sciences.
Sir David Roxbee Cox was a British statistician and educator. His wide-ranging contributions to the field of statistics included introducing logistic regression, the proportional hazards model and the Cox process, a point process named after him.
Sir Albert Charles Seward FRS was a British botanist and geologist.
Captain Frederick Wollaston Hutton was an English-born New Zealand scientist who applied the theory of natural selection to explain the origins and nature of the natural history of New Zealand. Whilst an army officer, he embarked on an academic career in geology and biology, to become one of the most able and prolific nineteenth century naturalists of New Zealand.
The Gabor Medal is one of the medals awarded by the Royal Society for "acknowledged distinction of interdisciplinary work between the life sciences with other disciplines".
William C Carruthers was a British botanist and paleobotanist.
John Walter Gregory,, was a British geologist and explorer, known principally for his work on glacial geology and on the geography and geology of Australia and East Africa.
Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental concept in science. In a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history and was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey.
Jameel Sadik "Jim" Al-Khalili is an Iraqi-British theoretical physicist, author and broadcaster. He is professor of theoretical physics and chair in the public engagement in science at the University of Surrey. He is a regular broadcaster and presenter of science programmes on BBC radio and television, and a frequent commentator about science in other British media.
Physiological Reviews is a journal published quarterly by the American Physiological Society which has been published since 1921. The editor in chief of the journal is Sadis Matalon. The journal's first managing editor, who served to his death in 1946, was Dr. Donald R. Hooker. Among the cadre of editors at the journal's inception were William Henry Howell, Lafayette Mendel, and John Macleod. From 1932 to 1950, the chairman of the board of editors of the journal was Anton J. Carlson. Other notable people who have served on the journal's editorial board include John Jacob Abel (c.1935), Ernest William Goodpasture (c.1938).
Philippe Mercier was an artist of French Huguenot descent from the German realm of Brandenburg-Prussia, usually defined to French school. Active in England for most of his working life, Mercier is considered one of the first practitioners of the Rococo style, and is credited with influencing a new generation of 18th-century English artists.
George Aitchison Jr. RA was a British architect and academic of "considerable reputation".
Sir George Vance Allen was an Anglo-Irish British medical doctor, bacteriologist and academic administrator who served as the first Vice-Chancellor of the University of Malaya.
