1913 In Science

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.
* Berlin Observatory moves to Babelsberg.

Biology

* William Temple Hornaday publishes
Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation
'.

Chemistry

* February – Daniel J. O'Conor and Herbert A. Faber file for a United States patent on the composite plastic laminate Formica.
* 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.
* Protactinium is first identified by Oswald Helmuth Göhring and Kasimir Fajans.
* 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. Frederick Soddy proposes that isotopes (a term which he introduces) may have differing atomic weights.
* J. J. Thomson shows that charged subatomic particles can be separated by their mass-to-charge ratio, the technique known as mass spectrometry.
* The Bergius process was first developed and patented by German chemist Friedrich Bergius in 1913.

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

* March – First publication of ''Isis'', the journal of the history of science edited by George Sarton, in Ghent.
* 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'' 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.

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.
* William Crookes creates sunglass lenses.
* 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.
* 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.
* Albert Schweitzer sets up the Albert Schweitzer Hospital at Lambaréné in French Equatorial Africa.

Psychology

* John B. Watson publishes the articl
"Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It"
— sometimes called "The Behaviorist Manifesto".

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.
* 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).
* Oskar Barnack of Leitz produces the first 35 mm film miniature still camera.
* French inventor René Lorin patents the ramjet, but attempts to build a prototype fail due to inadequate materials.

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.
* February 28 – David Hawkins (died 2002), American philosopher of science and mathematics and science educator.
* March 2 – Georgy Flyorov (died 1990), Russian physicist who is known for his discovery of the spontaneous fission.
* March 26 – Paul Erdős (died 1996), Hungarian mathematician.
* April 20 – Willi Hennig (died 1976), German entomologist and pioneer of cladistics.
* April 30 – Genevieve Grotjan Feinstein (died 2006), American mathematician and cryptanalyst.
* 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.
* August 22 – Bruno Pontecorvo (died 1993), Italian-born physicist.
* 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

{{reflist

20th century in science
1910s in science