1944 in science

The year 1944 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

• Hendrik van de Hulst predicts the 21 cm hyperfine line of neutral interstellar hydrogen.

Biology

• February 1 - Oswald T. Avery and colleagues publish the Avery–MacLeod–McCarty experiment^[1] showing that a DNA molecule can carry an inheritable trait to a living organism. This is important because many biologists thought that proteins were the hereditary material and nucleic acids too simple chemically to serve as genetic storage molecules.^[2]
• Erwin Schrödinger publishes What is Life?, containing conceptual discussion of the genetic code and of negentropy.

Chemistry

• February - Lars Onsager publishes the exact solution to the two-dimensional Ising model.^[3]
• Americium discovered by Glenn T. Seaborg, et al.

Computer science

• August 7 - IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, best known as the Harvard Mark I.

Geology

• March 18 - Last eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

History of science

• The Whipple Museum of the History of Science is established when Robert Whipple presents his collection of scientific instruments to the University of Cambridge, England.

Mathematics

• John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern's book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior is published by Princeton University Press.

Medicine

• Hans Asperger describes Asperger syndrome.^[4]
• David S. Sheridan invents the disposable plastic tracheal tube catheter.^[5]

Meteorology

• June 5 - Group Captain James Stagg correctly forecasts a brief improvement in weather conditions over the English Channel which permits the following day's Normandy landings to take place.

Technology

• September 8 - First operational use of the V-2 rocket, the first ballistic missile.
• December 9 - First flight of the Heinkel He 162 Volksjäger, the second jet engined fighter aircraft to be introduced by the Luftwaffe in World War II.
• Erik Wallenberg and Ruben Rausing invent a way to package milk in paper and start the company Tetra Pak.
• First operational use of a snorkel on a submarine.

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics - Isidor Isaac Rabi
  • Chemistry - Otto Hahn
  • Medicine - Joseph Erlanger, Herbert Spencer Gasser

Births

• July 13 - Ernő Rubik, Hungarian inventor and architect.
• August 24 - Gregory Jarvis (died 1986), American astronaut.
• Elizabeth Loftus, American psychologist.

Deaths

• January 20 - James McKeen Cattell (born 1860), American psychologist.
• March 5 - Ernst Cohen (born 1869), Dutch Jewish chemist (in Auschwitz concentration camp).
• November 2 - Thomas Midgley, Jr. (born 1889), American chemist and inventor.
• November 22 - Sir Arthur Eddington (born 1882), English astrophysicist.

References