1918 in science

The year 1918 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

• Kiyotsugu Hirayama identifies several groups of main belt asteroids, now known as Hirayama families.
• Harlow Shapley demonstrates that globular clusters are arranged in a spheroid or halo whose center is not the Earth, but the center of the galaxy.
• Max Wolf discovers the star Wolf 359.
• Heber Curtis discovers a relativistic jet of matter emerging from Elliptical Galaxy M87.

Biology

• R.A. Fisher puts forward a genetic model that shows that continuous variation could be the result of Mendelian inheritance in his paper "The Correlation Between Relatives on the Supposition of Mendelian Inheritance".
• J. Henri Fabre's The Sacred Beetle, and others published in English.
• Jacques Loeb's Forced Movements, Tropisms, and Animal Conduct published in the United States.

Cryptography

• February 23 - Arthur Scherbius applies to patent the Enigma machine.^[1]
• Edward Hugh Hebern patents the Hebern rotor machine.

Mathematics

• Felix Hausdorff introduces the concept of the fractional Hausdorff dimension.^[2]
• Gaston Julia describes the iteration of a rational function.^[3]

Medicine

• June - "Spanish" flu pandemic begins.^[4]

Physics

• Josef Lense and Hans Thirring find the gravitomagnetic precession of gyroscopes in the equations of general relativity.
• Hans Reissner and Gunnar Nordström solve the Einstein and Maxwell field equations for charged spherically-symmetric non-rotating systems.
• Friedrich Kottler gets Schwarzschild solution without Einstein vacuum field equations.

Technology

• Edwin Armstrong invents the superheterodyne receiver.
• Theodore von Karman and Asbóth Oszkár build the first co-axial helicopter.
• Anton Fokker invents the interrupter gear.
• A. M. Nicolson invents the radio crystal oscillator
• Charles Strite invents the pop-up toaster.^[5]

Awards

• Nobel Prize
  • Physics - Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck
  • Chemistry - Fritz Haber
  • Medicine - not awarded

Births

• January 27 - Antonín Mrkos (died 1996), astronomer.
• March 16 - Frederick Reines (died 1998), physicist.
• April 4 - Joseph Ashbrook (died 1980), astronomer.
• April 25 - Gérard de Vaucouleurs (died 1995), astronomer.
• May 11 - Richard Feynman (died 1988), physicist, Nobel laureate.
• July 15 - Bertram N. Brockhouse (died 2003), physicist.
• August 13 - Frederick Sanger, molecular biologist.
• August 29 - John Herivel (died 2011), cryptanalyst and science historian.
• September 27 - Martin Ryle (died 1984), astronomer.
• October 4 - Adrian Kantrowitz (died 2008), cardiac surgeon.
• November 10 - Ernst Otto Fischer (died 2007), chemist, Nobel laureate.
• November 19 - Hendrik C. van de Hulst (died 2000), astronomer.
• December 25 - Tamara Mikhailovna Smirnova (died 2001), astronomer.

Deaths

• January 6 - Georg Cantor (born 1845), mathematician.
• January 26 - Ewald Hering (born 1834), physiologist.
• January 31 - Ivan Pulyui (born 1845), physicist.
• April 20 - Karl Ferdinand Braun (born 1850), physicist.
• May 31 - Alexander Mitscherlich (born 1836), chemist.
• June 27 - George Mary Searle (born 1839), astronomer.
• September 7 - Peter Ludwig Mejdell Sylow (born 1832), mathematician.
• October 28 - Ulisse Dini (born 1845), mathematician.
• November 3 - Aleksandr Lyapunov (born 1857), mathematician and physicist.
• November 29 - Thomas Allinson (born 1858) physician and dietetic reformer.
• December 27 - Birt Acres (born 1854), pioneer of cinematography.

References