1900 in science

The year 1900 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Aeronautics

* July 2 – The first rigid airship flight is made by the LZ1 designed by Ferdinand von Zeppelin.
* c. October 3 – The Wright brothers begin their first manned glider experimental flights at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina and failed for the first few attempts

Chemistry

* Moses Gomberg identifies the first organic radical (according to the modern definition), triphenylmethyl radical.
* Johannes Rydberg refines the expression for observed hydrogen line wavelengths.

Earth sciences

* Richard Dixon Oldham distinguishes between primary, secondary and tertiary waveforms as recorded by seismometers.

Exploration

* American explorer Robert Peary first sights Kaffeklubben Island, the northernmost point of land on Earth.

Genetics

* Hugo de Vries publishes the results of his experiments in Mendelian inheritance.

Mathematics

* Max Dehn introduces two examples of Dehn plane and the Dehn invariant.
* David Hilbert states his list of 23 problems which show where some further mathematical work is needed.
* Russell's paradox is first discovered by Ernst Zermelo but he does not publish it, and it is known only to Hilbert, Husserl and other members of the University of Göttingen.
* Gaston Tarry confirms Euler's conjecture that no 6×6 orthogonal Graeco-Latin square is possible.
* Alfred Young introduces the Young tableau.

Medicine

* English surgeon and ophthalmologist Edward Treacher Collins describes the essential traits of Treacher Collins syndrome.
* German gynecologist Hermann Johannes Pfannenstiel publishes his description of the " Pfannenstiel incision", a transverse incision used in genitourinary surgery that continues to be widely used.

Paleontology

* Barnum Brown finds the first partial skeleton of '' Tyrannosaurus rex'' in eastern Wyoming.
* Dr. James K. Hampson identifies the Island 35 Mastodon skeleton in the Mississippi River.

Photography

* Kodak introduce their first Brownie (camera).

Physics

* April 26 – Guglielmo Marconi patents the tuned circuit.
* October 19 – Max Planck produces Planck's law of black-body radiation and Planck constant, marking the birth of quantum physics.
* December 7 – Max Planck states his quantum hypothesis.
* December 23 – Reginald Fessenden, experimenting with a high-frequency spark transmitter, successfully transmits speech over a distance of about 1.6 kilometers (one mile), from Cobb Island, Maryland, which appears to have been the first audio radio transmission.
* Gamma rays discovered by Paul Villard while studying uranium decay.

Physiology

* Karl Landsteiner makes the first discovery of blood types, identifying the ABO blood group system.
* Carl Rasch coins the term ' polymorphous light eruption'.
* Jōkichi Takamine and Keizo Uenaka discover adrenaline.

Zoology

* Richard J. Ussher and Robert Warren publish ''The Birds of Ireland''.

Awards

* Copley Medal: Marcellin Berthelot

Births

* January 2 – Una Ledingham (died 1965), English physician specialising in diabetes mellitus and pregnancy.
* March 4 – Heinrich Willi (died 1971), Swiss pediatrician.
* March 8 – Howard H. Aiken (died 1973), American computing pioneer.
* March 19 – Frédéric Joliot (died 1958), French physicist.
* April 3 – Albert Ingham (died 1967), English mathematician.
* April 25 – Wolfgang Pauli (died 1958), Austrian-born physicist.
* April 26 – Charles Richter (died 1985), American geophysicist and inventor.
* April 28 – Jan Oort (died 1992), Dutch astronomer.
* May 5 – Helen Redfield (died 1988), American geneticist.
* May 6 – Zheng Ji (died 2010), Chinese biochemist and nutritionist.
* May 10 – Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (died 1979), English-born American astronomer and astrophysicist.
* May 22 – Honor Fell (died 1986), English biologist.
* June 24 – Wilhelm Cauer (killed 1945), German mathematician and electronic engineer.
* June 25 – Philip D'Arcy Hart (died 2006), English medical researcher, pioneer in tuberculosis treatment.
* June 30 – James Stagg (died 1975) Scottish meteorologist.
* July 9 – Frances McConnell-Mills, born Frances Mary McConnell (died 1975), American toxicologist.
* August 25 – Hans Adolf Krebs (died 1981), German-born medical doctor and biochemist.
* August 26 – Hellmuth Walter (died 1980), German-born engineer and inventor.
* October 2 – Isabella Forshall (died 1989), English pediatric surgeon.
* November 5 – Ethelwynn Trewavas (died 1993), English ichthyologist.
* December 9 – Joseph Needham (died 1995), English biochemist and writer on the history of science and technology in China.
* December 12 – Mária Telkes (died 1995), Hungarian-American scientist and inventor.
* December 17 – Mary Cartwright (died 1998), English mathematician, one of the first people to analyze a dynamical system with chaos.
* Robina Addis (died 1986), English pioneering professional psychiatric social worker.
* Ernest Gibbins (killed 1942), English entomologist.

Deaths

* January 13 – Peter Waage (born 1833), Norwegian chemist.
* January 22 – David E. Hughes (born 1831), British-American inventor.
* March 6 – Gottlieb Daimler (born 1834), German engineer, automotive pioneer.
* March 10 – George James Symons (born 1838), English meteorologist.
* April 1 – George Jackson Mivart (born 1827), English biologist.
* August 4 – Étienne Lenoir (born 1822), Belgian mechanical engineer.
* August 31 – John Bennet Lawes (born 1814), English agricultural scientist.
* October 16 – Henry Acland (born 1815), English physician.
* October 29 – Bruno Abakanowicz (born 1852), Polish mathematician, inventor and electrical engineer.

References

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19th century in science
1900s in science