1919 in science

The year 1919 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Chemistry

• June 1 - The term covalence in relation to chemical bonding models is first used by Irving Langmuir.^[1]

History of science

• Leonard Eugene Dickson begins publication of History of the Theory of Numbers.

Medicine

• Dr George Newman is appointed as the first Chief Medical Officer to the Ministry of Health in England and Wales.

Physics

• May 29 - Einstein's theory of general relativity confirmed by Arthur Eddington's observation of the "bending of light" during the total solar eclipse on this day.^[2]
• Arnold Sommerfeld and Walther Kossel publish their displacement law.^[3]
• James Jeans discovers that the dynamical constants of motion determine the distribution function for a system of particles.

Psychology

• In Berlin Dr Magnus Hirschfeld and Arthur Kronfeld found the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft.^[4][5][6][7]

Technology

• First crossings of the Atlantic Ocean by air.
  • May 8–31 - US Navy Curtiss floatplane NC-4 commanded by Albert Cushing Read makes the first transatlantic flight, from Naval Air Station Rockaway to Lisbon via the Azores.
  • June 14–15 - A Vickers Vimy flown by John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown makes the first nonstop transatlantic flight, from St. John's, Newfoundland, to Clifden, Ireland.
  • July 2–6 - British airship R34 makes the first transatlantic flight by dirigible, and the first westbound flight, from RAF East Fortune, Scotland, to Mineola, New York.
• December 1 - XWA, in Montreal, Quebec, is the first public radio station in North America to broadcast.
• Lee De Forest files his first United States patent for the Phonofilm sound-on-film process.

Awards

• Nobel Prize
  • Physics - Johannes Stark
  • Chemistry - not awarded
  • Medicine - Jules Bordet

Births

• January 23 - Hans Hass, zoologist and oceanographer.
• June 22 - Henri Tajfel (died 1982), social psychologist.
• September 6 - Wilson Greatbatch (died 2011), biomedical engineer.

Deaths

• February 19 - Frederick DuCane Godman (born 1834), lepidopterist, entomologist and ornithologist.
• April 4 - Sir William Crookes (born 1832), chemist and physicist.
• April 17 - Bernhard Sigmund Schultze (born 1827), obstetrician.
• June 30 - John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh (born 1842), Nobel Prize-winning physicist.
• July 21 - Gustaf Retzius (born 1842), anatomist.
• August 8 - Ernst Haeckel (born 1834), zoologist.
• November 23 - Henry Gantt (born 1861), project engineer.
• December 29 - Sir William Osler (born 1849), physician.

References