1942 in science

The year 1942 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

• February 27 - James Stanley Hey, a British Army research officer, first detects radio waves emitted by the sun, helping to pioneer radio astronomy.^[1]
• October 3 - The first V-2 rocket is successfully launched from Test Stand VII at Peenemünde, Germany, flying a distance of 147 km and reaching a height of 84.5 km, becoming the first man-made object to reach space.

Chemistry

• Cyanoacrylate adhesive is invented by Harry Coover of Eastman Kodak.^[2]
• Eastman Kodak first market Kodacolor color negative film.^[3]

Computer science

• John V. Atanasoff with Clifford Berry successfully test the Atanasoff–Berry Computer, the first electronic digital computing device.^[4]

Physics

• August 13 - United States Chief of Engineers, Major General Eugene Reybold formally establishes the 'Manhattan Engineer District' of the Corps of Engineers to undertake production facility construction work for what will become known as the Manhattan Project.^[5][6]
• December 2 - Chicago Pile-1, the first nuclear reactor, goes critical under the squash court of the University of Chicago, thanks to the efforts of Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard, and the rest of the Chicago pile team.

Psychology

• Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers, produce the first Briggs-Myers Type Indicator.

Technology

• July 18 - Messerschmitt Me 262 jet aircraft prototype makes its first flight under jet power.

Births

• January 8 - Stephen Hawking, English physicist and best-selling author of A Brief History of Time

Deaths

• March 10 - William Henry Bragg, English recipient of a Nobel Prize in Physics (born 1862)
• March 14 - Friedrich Karl Georg Fedde, German botanist (born 1873)
• August 12 - Sabina Spielrein, Russian psychoanalyst, in Zmievskaya Balka massacre^[7] (born 1885)
• November 13 - Robert Remak, German mathematician, in Auschwitz (born 1888)

References