1935 in science

The year 1935 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

• Opening of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City.

Chemistry

• February 28–March 1 - Working with polyamides to develop a viable new fiber for chemical company DuPont, American chemist Gérard Berchet working under the direction of Wallace Carothers first synthesizes the synthetic polymer nylon at Wilmington, Delaware.^[1]
• Eastman Kodak first market Kodachrome subtractive color reversal film as 16 mm movie film.^[2][3] It was invented by two professional musicians, Leopold Godowsky, Jr. and Leopold Mannes.^[4][5][6]

Geology

• Charles Richter and Beno Gutenberg develop the Richter magnitude scale for quantifying earthquakes.

History of science

• American virologist Hans Zisser publishes Rats, lice and history: being a study in biography, which... deals with the life history of typhus fever.^[7]

Mathematics

• April 19 - Alonzo Church presents his paper "An unsolvable problem of elementary number theory", introducing his theorem on the Entscheidungsproblem, to the American Mathematical Society.^[8]
• George Pólya develops counting techniques for graphs as algebra.^[9]
• George K. Zipf proposes Zipf's law on probability distribution.^[10]

Medicine

• Ladislas J. Meduna discovers metrazol shock therapy
• First vaccine for Yellow Fever

Pharmacology

• January 2 - IG Farben are granted a patent in Germany for the medical application of the first sulfonamide prodrug, Sulfonamidochrysoidine (KI-730; marketed as Prontosil). In February, Gerhard Domagk and others publish (in Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift) the first clinical results on its properties as an antibiotic, the first commercially available; and in November a team directed by Ernest Fourneau at the Pasteur Institute identify sulfanilamide as the active component.^[11]

Physics

• January 8 - A.C. Hardy patents the spectrophotometer.
• February 26 - Robert Watson-Watt and Arnold Wilkins first demonstrate the use of radar to detect aircraft, near Daventry in England.^[12]
• Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen publish a paper arguing that quantum mechanics is not a complete physical theory (the EPR paradox).^[13] Discussion of this introduces the 'Schrödinger's cat' thought experiment.^[14]
• Jacques Yvon introduces S-particle distribution functions in classical statistical mechanics;^[15] they will later be included in the BBGKY hierarchy.

Technology

• July 16 - The world's first parking meter is installed in Oklahoma City to a design by Holger George Thuesen and Gerald A. Hale patented by Carl Magee.^{[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]}

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics - James Chadwick
  • Chemistry - Frédéric Joliot, Irène Joliot-Curie
  • Medicine - Hans Spemann

Births

• February 15 - Roger B. Chaffee (died 1967), astronaut.
• June 25 - Charles Sheffield (died 2002), science fiction author and physicist.
• August 3 - Georgi Shonin (died 1997), cosmonaut.
• September 11 - Gherman Titov (died 2000), cosmonaut.
• November 11 - Magdi Yacoub, cardiothoracic surgeon.

Deaths

• March 12 - Mihajlo Idvorski Pupin (born 1858), physicist.
• July 3 - André Citroën (born 1878), automobile manufacturer.
• December 4 - Charles Richet (born 1850), winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine.
• November 6 - Henry Fairfield Osborn (born 1857), paleontologist.
• Agnes Pockels (born 1862), chemist.

References