1912 in science

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The year 1912 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Archaeology

• December 6 – The Nefertiti Bust is found at Amarna in Egypt by the German Oriental Company (Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft – DOG), led by German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt.

Astronomy

• At the beginning of this year an extreme decadal variation in length of day produces mean solar days having a duration of 86400.00389 seconds of Terrestrial Time (or ephemeris time), the slowest rotation of Earth's crust ever to be recorded.^[1]

Biology

• July 23 – Horace Donisthorpe first discovers Anergates atratulus in the New Forest, England.
• Reginald Punnett is appointed as first Arthur Balfour Professor of Genetics in the University of Cambridge (U.K.), probably the oldest chair of genetics in the English-speaking world.

Chemistry

• Peter Debye derives the T-cubed law for the low temperature heat capacity of a nonmetallic solid.
• Casimir Funk introduces the concept of vitamins.^[2]
• J. J. Thomson finds the first evidence for multiple isotopes of a stable (non-radioactive) element as part of his exploration into the composition of canal rays (positive ions).^[3][4]
• Fritz Klatte, a German chemist working for Griesheim-Elektron, discovers polyvinyl acetate and applies for a patent for preparing the monomer, vinyl acetate, by addition of acetic acid to acetylene using a mercuric chloride catalyst^[5] although it is not successfully commercialized at this time.
• Wilbur Scoville devises the Scoville scale for measuring the heat of peppers.
• December 24 – Merck files patent applications for synthesis of the entactogenic drug MDMA, developed by Anton Köllisch.^[6][7][8]

Earth sciences

• January – Alfred Wegener proposes a fully formulated theory of continental drift and gives the supercontinent Pangaea its name.^[9][10]
• June 6 – The Novarupta volcano on the Alaska Peninsula comes into being through a VEI 6 eruption, the largest this century.

Exploration

• January 17 – British polar explorer Robert Falcon Scott and a team of four reach the South Pole to find that Amundsen has beaten them to it. They will die on the return journey, just eleven miles from a polar base (March 16–29).^[11]
• March 7 – Roald Amundsen announces in Hobart that his expedition reached the South Pole on last December 14.

History of science

• November 20 – History of Medicine Society holds its first meeting, under the chairmanship of Sir William Osler, in London.
• Georgius Agricola's De re metallica (1556) is first published in an English translation, made by Herbert and Lou Henry Hoover, in London.
• Voynich manuscript discovered.

Mathematics

• Publication of the 2nd volume of Principia Mathematica by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, one of the most important and seminal works in mathematical logic and philosophy.
• Karl F. Sundman solves the n-body problem for n=3.
• Axel Thue discovers Pisot–Vijayaraghavan numbers.

Medicine

• Harvey Cushing identifies Cushing's disease, caused by a malfunction of the pituitary gland.
• Solomon Carter Fuller first names Alzheimer's disease.
• Hakaru Hashimoto first describes the symptoms of Hashimoto's thyroiditis.^[12]

Metallurgy

• Krupp engineers Benno Strauss and Eduard Maurer patent austenitic stainless steel (October 17)^[13] and Elwood Haynes (in the United States) and Harry Brearley (of Brown-Firth in Sheffield, England) independently discover martensitic stainless steel alloys.^[14][15]

Meteorology

• April 5 – Milutin Milanković's Contribution to the mathematical theory of climate, his first work in this field, is published in Belgrade.

Paleontology

• December 18 – Skull of "Piltdown Man" presented to the Geological Society of London as the fossilised remains of a previously unknown form of early human. It is revealed to be a hoax in 1953.^[11]

Physics

• November 11 – Lawrence Bragg presents his derivation of Bragg's law for the angles for coherent and incoherent scattering from a crystal lattice.^[16]
• Max von Laue suggests using crystal lattices to diffract X-rays.
• Walter Friedrich and Paul Knipping diffract X-rays in zinc blende.
• Victor Hess discovers that the ionization of air increases with altitude, indicating the existence of cosmic radiation.

Psychology

• Carl Jung publishes Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (Psychology of the Unconscious), based on lectures delivered at Fordham University and precipitating a break with Sigmund Freud.
• Sabina Spielrein delivers her paper on "Destruction as the Cause of Coming Into Being" to the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.

Technology

• April 14–15 – Sinking of the Titanic: The ocean liner RMS Titanic strikes an iceberg and sinks on her maiden voyage from the United Kingdom to the United States.^[11][17]
• The British Royal Navy introduces the director ship gun fire-control system using the Dreyer Table, a mechanical analogue computer.^[18]
• The Sperry Corporation develops the first gyroscopic autopilot ("gyroscopic stabilizer apparatus") for aviation use.
• The earth inductor compass is first patented by Donald M. Bliss.

Other events

• American ornithologist Robert Ridgway publishes Color Standards and Color Nomenclature.
• Conférence internationale de l'heure radiotélégraphique.
• First International Congress of Eugenics held in London with the support of Leonard Darwin, Winston Churchill, Auguste Forel, Alexander Graham Bell, Charles Davenport and other prominent scientists.^[19]

Awards

• Nobel Prize
  • Physics – Gustaf Dalén^[20]
  • Chemistry – Victor Grignard; Paul Sabatier
  • Medicine – Alexis Carrel

Births

• January 21 – Konrad Emil Bloch (died 2000), German-born biochemist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• January 27 – Francis Rogallo (died 2009), American aeronautical engineer.
• January 30 – Werner Hartmann (died 1988), German physicist.
• February 13 – Natan Yavlinsky (died 1962), Russian nuclear physicist.
• February 25 – Preben von Magnus (died 1973), Danish virologist.
• March 1 – Boris Chertok (died 2011), Russian rocket designer.
• March 19 – Bill Frankland (died 2020), English immunologist.
• March 23 – Wernher von Braun (died 1977), German-born physicist and engineer.
• April 19 – Glenn T. Seaborg (died 1999), American physical chemist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
• May 22 – Herbert C. Brown (died 2004), English-born chemist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
• May 28 – Ruby Payne-Scott (died 1981), Australian radioastronomer.
• May 30 – Julius Axelrod (died 2004), American biochemist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• May 31 – Chien-Shiung Wu (died 1997), Chinese-American nuclear physicist, winner of the Wolf Prize in Physics.
• June 23 – Alan Turing (died 1954), English computer scientist.^[21]
• June 30 – Ludwig Bölkow (died 2003), German aeronautical engineer.
• August 11 – Norman Levinson (died 1975), American mathematician.
• August 13 – Salvador Luria (died 1991), Italian-born biologist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• August 30 – Edward Mills Purcell (died 1997), American physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics.^[22]
• September 7 – David Packard (died 1996), American electronics engineer.^[23]
• September 22 – Herbert Mataré (died 2011), German physicist.
• October 1 – Kathleen Ollerenshaw (died 2014), English mathematician.
• November 14 – Tung-Yen Lin (died 2003), Chinese-born civil engineer.
• November 19 – George Emil Palade (died 2008), Romanian-born microbiologist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• November 22 – Paul Zamecnik (died 2009), American scientist playing a central role in the early history of molecular biology.

Deaths

• February 10 – Joseph Lister (born 1827), English inventor of antiseptic.
• February 12 – Osborne Reynolds (born 1842), British physicist.
• March 19 – Thomas Harrison Montgomery Jr. (born 1873), American zoologist and cell biologist.
• March 28 – Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran (born 1838), French chemist.
• March 29
  • Robert Falcon Scott (born 1868), English Antarctic explorer.
  • Edward Wilson (born 1872), English physician and naturalist.
• April 18 – Martha Ripley (born 1843), American physician.^[24]
• May 4 – Nettie Stevens (born 1861), American geneticist.
• May 30 – Wilbur Wright (born 1867), American aviation pioneer.
• July 17 – Henri Poincaré (born 1854), French mathematician.
• August 7 – François-Alphonse Forel (born 1841), Swiss pioneer of limnology.
• November 23 – Charles Bourseul (born 1829), French telegraph engineer.
• December 17 – Spiru Haret (born 1851), Romanian mathematician, astronomer and politician.
• December 21 – Paul Gordan (born 1837), German Jewish mathematician, "the king of invariant theory".

References

1. Stephenson, F. R.; Morrison, L. V.; Whitrow, G. J. (1984). "Long-Term Changes in the Rotation of the Earth: 700 B.C. to A.D. 1980" (PDF). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. 313 (1524). London: 47–70. Bibcode:1984RSPTA.313...47S. doi:10.1098/rsta.1984.0082. ISSN 0080-4614. S2CID 120566848. Retrieved May 24, 2012.
2. Just The Facts-Inventions & Discoveries. School Specialty Publishing. 2005.
3. Thomson, J. J. (1912). "XIX. Further experiments on positive rays". Philosophical Magazine. Series 6. 24 (140). London: 209–253. doi:10.1080/14786440808637325.
4. Thomson, J. J. (1910). "LXXXIII. Rays of positive electricity". Philosophical Magazine. Series 6. 20 (118). London: 752–767. doi:10.1080/14786441008636962.
5. Deutsche Reichs Patent no. 281687 (4 July 1913); abstract in Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry (London) 34 (1915) p. 623.
6. Bernschneider-Reif, S.; Oxler, F.; Freudenmann, R. W. (2006). "The Origin of MDMA ("Ecstasy") – Separating the Facts From the Myths". Die Pharmazie. 61 (11): 966–972. PMID 17152992.
7. Firma E. Merck in Darmstadt (May 16, 1914). "German Patent 274350: Verfahren zur Darstellung von Alkyloxyaryl-, Dialkyloxyaryl- und Alkylendioxyarylaminopropanen bzw. deren am Stickstoff monoalkylierten Derivaten". Kaiserliches Patentamt. Retrieved April 12, 2009.
8. Firma E. Merck in Darmstadt (October 15, 1914). "German Patent 279194: Verfahren zur Darstellung von Hydrastinin Derivaten". Kaiserliches Patentamt. Retrieved April 12, 2009.
9. Wegener, Alfred (January 6, 1912). "Die Herausbildung der Grossformen der Erdrinde (Kontinente und Ozeane), auf geophysikalischer Grundlage". Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen. 63: 185–195, 253–256, 305–309.
10. Demhardt, Imre Josef (2005). "Alfred Wegener's Hypothesis on Continental Drift and Its Discussion in Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen (1912–1942)" (PDF). Polarforschung. 75: 29–35. Retrieved April 18, 2011.
11. Penguin Pocket On This Day. Penguin Reference Library. 2006. ISBN 978-0-14-102715-9.
12. Hashimoto, H. (1912). "Zur Kenntnis der lymphomatösen Veränderung der Schilddrüse (Struma lymphomatosa)". Archiv für Klinische Chirurgie (in German). 97: 219–248.
13. "ThyssenKrupp Nirosta: History". Archived from the original on September 2, 2007. Retrieved August 13, 2007.
14. Carlisle, Rodney P. (2004). Scientific American Inventions and Discoveries. John Wiley and Sons. p. 380. ISBN 978-0-471-24410-3. Retrieved September 3, 2011. Elwood Haynes 1919 patent number.
15. "A non-rusting steel". The New York Times. January 31, 1915.
16. To the Cambridge Philosophical Society. "The Nobel Prize in Physics 1915". Nobel Foundation. Retrieved November 29, 2012.
17. Lord, Walter (1955). A Night to Remember. New York: Holt.
18. Brooks, John (2003). "The Admiralty Fire Control Tables". Warship: 69–93.
19. Blom, Philipp (2008). The Vertigo Years: Change and Culture in the West, 1900-1914. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. p. 334. ISBN 978-0-7710-1630-1.
20. "These Nobel Prize Winners Weren't Always Noble". National Geographic News. October 6, 2015. Archived from the original on August 8, 2020. Retrieved January 19, 2021.
21. "Alan Turing | Biography, Facts, & Education". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved February 14, 2020.
22. "E.M. Purcell | American physicist". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved May 17, 2021.
23. "Obituary: David Packard". The Independent. March 28, 1996. Archived from the original on May 1, 2022. Retrieved February 21, 2018.
24. Ogilvie, Marilyn Bailey; Harvey, Joy Dorothy (2000). The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science: L-Z. Taylor & Francis. p. 1102. ISBN 978-0-415-92040-7.