1928 in science

List of years in science (table)
... 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 ... 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 ... 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 ...
Art Archaeology Architecture Literature Music Philosophy Science +...

The year 1928 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Anthropology

• American anthropologist Margaret Mead publishes Coming of Age in Samoa, "a psychological study of primitive youth for Western civilization".

Archaeology

• The old Canaanite city of Ugarit is rediscovered.

Biology

• January – Frederick Griffith reports the results of Griffith's experiment, indirectly proving the existence of DNA.^[1][2]
• September 3 – Alexander Fleming, at St Mary's Hospital, London, accidentally rediscovers the antibiotic Penicillin, forgotten since Ernest Duchesne's original discovery in 1896.^[3][4]
• American biogerontologist Raymond Pearl publishes his Rate of Living Hypothesis, proposing that lifespan is shorter in animals with faster metabolisms.^[5]

Computer science

• April – Leslie Comrie publishes an article "On the Construction of Tables by Interpolation", describing the use of punched card equipment for interpolating tables of data, and becomes the first to use such equipment for scientific calculations, using Fourier synthesis to compute the principal terms in the motion of the Moon for 1935–2000.

History of science

• Florian Cajori begins publication of A History of Mathematical Notations.

Mathematics

• David Hilbert and Wilhelm Ackermann publish Grundzüge der theoretischen Logik, a pioneering elementary text in first-order logic stating the Entscheidungsproblem.^[6]
• John von Neumann publishes Zur Theorie der Gesellschaftsspiele, a text in game theory.

Medicine

• October 12 – An 'iron lung' medical ventilator designed by Philip Drinker and Louis Agassiz Shaw, Jr., is used for the first time, at Boston Children's Hospital in the United States for treatment of poliomyelitis.
• Dementia pugilistica is first described by forensic pathologist Dr. Harrison Stanford Martland, chief medical examiner of Essex County, New Jersey.^[7]

Physics

• February 28 – C. V. Raman and K. S. Krishnan discover Raman scattering in liquids.^[8]
• Paul Dirac proposes the Dirac equation as a relativistic equation of motion for the wavefunction of the electron,^[9] leading him to predict the existence of the positron, the electron's antiparticle.^[10]

Technology

• February 8 – British inventor John Logie Baird broadcasts a transatlantic television signal from London to Hartsdale, New York.^[11]
• June 11 – Hungarian inventor Kálmán Tihanyi files patents in Germany, the United Kingdom and France for a cathode ray television transmission system.^[12]
• July 3
  • British inventor John Logie Baird demonstrates the world's first color television transmission, using scanning discs.^[13]
  • Ulster-born engineer Harry Ferguson obtains a British patent for his three-point linkage for tractors.^[14]
• July 7 – The first machine-sliced and machine-wrapped loaf of bread is sold in Chillicothe, Missouri, using Otto Frederick Rohwedder's technology.
• September 3 – Philo Farnsworth demonstrates to the Press the world's first working all-electronic television system, employing electronic scanning in both the pickup and display devices.^[15][16]
• December – Completion of the Maurzyce Bridge near Łowicz in central Poland, the world's first road bridge of wholly welded construction, designed by Stefan Bryła.^[17][18][19]

Publications

• Arthur Eddington publishes the popular text The Nature of the Physical World in the United Kingdom, including a statement of the infinite monkey theorem.^[20]

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Owen Willans Richardson
  • Chemistry – Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus
  • Medicine – Charles Jules Henri Nicolle

Births

• January 4 – Henry T. Lynch, American cancer geneticist.
• March 8 – Gerald Bull (killed 1990), Canadian ballistics engineer.
• March 28 – Alexander Grothendieck (died 2014), German-born French mathematician, pioneer of modern algebraic geometry.
• April 6 – James Watson, American geneticist.
• April 20 – Charles David Keeling (died 2005), American atmospheric chemist, geochemist and oceanograper.
• May 23 – Jean E. Sammet, American computer programmer.
• May 26 – Jack Kevorkian (died 2011), American pathologist, advocate of euthanasia.
• June 13 – John Forbes Nash, Jr. (died 2015), American mathematician, winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
• June 28 – Harold Evans, English editor.
• October 25 – Peter Naur (died 2016), Danish data scientist.

Deaths

• February 4 – Hendrik Lorentz (born 1853), Dutch physicist and Nobel laureate.
• March 19 – David Ferrier (born 1843), Scottish-born neurologist.
• March 21 – E. Walter Maunder (born 1851), English astronomer.
• May 21 – Hideyo Noguchi (born 1876), Japanese bacteriologist.
• August 30 – Wilhelm Wien (born 1864), German physicist.
• October 29 – John Macintyre (born 1857), Scottish laryngologist and pioneer radiographer.

References

1. Griffith, Fred. (January 1928). "The Significance of Pneumococcal Types". Journal of Hygiene (Cambridge University Press) 27 (2): 113–159. doi:10.1017/S0022172400031879. JSTOR 4626734. PMC 2167760. PMID 20474956. Retrieved 2011-11-30.
2. Downie, A. W. (1972). "Pneumococcal transformation – a backward view: Fourth Griffith Memorial Lecture" (PDF). Journal of General Microbiology 73 (1): 1–11. doi:10.1099/00221287-73-1-1. PMID 4143929. Retrieved 2011-11-30.
3. "Culture shock will highlight penicillin discovery" (PDF) (Press release). London: Royal Society of Chemistry. 2003-09-02. Retrieved 2011-11-30.
4. Duchesne 1897, Antagonism between molds and bacteria. An English translation by Michael Witty. Fort Myers, 2013. ASIN B00E0KRZ0E and B00DZVXPIK.
5. Pearl, Raymond (1928). The Rate of Living, Being an Account of Some Experimental Studies on the Biology of Life Duration. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
6. Hendricks, Vincent; et al., eds. (2004). First-order logic revisited. Logische Philosophie, 12. Berlin: Logos Verlag. ISBN 3-8325-0475-3.
7. Martland, H. S. (1928). "Punch Drunk". Journal of the American Medical Association 91 (15): 1103–1107. doi:10.1001/jama.1928.02700150029009.
8. Raman, C. V. (1928). "A new radiation". Indian Journal of Physics 2: 387–398. Retrieved 2013-04-14.
9. Dirac, P. A. M. (1928-02-01). "The Quantum Theory of the Electron". Proceedings of the Royal Society, Series A (London) 117 (778): 610–624. Bibcode:1928RSPSA.117..610D. doi:10.1098/rspa.1928.0023. Retrieved 2011-06-22.
10. Dirac, Paul A. M. (1933-12-12). "Theory of Electrons and Positrons". The Nobel Foundation. Archived from the original on 4 June 2011. Retrieved 2011-06-22.
11. "Transatlantic Television in 1928". Baird Television. Retrieved 2015-09-29. Extract from The New York Times 1928-02-09.
12. Improvements in television apparatus. European Patent Office, Patent No. GB313456. Convention date (Germany): 1928-06-11, UK application: 1928-06-11, published: 1930-11-11, retrieved: 2009-12-25. Archived 2012-02-20.
13. The Hutchinson Factfinder. Helicon. 1999. ISBN 1-85986-000-1.
14. No. 320084.
15. "Philo Taylor Farnsworth (1906-1971)". The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco. Archived from the original on 22 June 2011. Retrieved 2011-06-22.
16. Farnsworth, Elma G. (1989). Distant Vision: Romance & Discovery on an Invisible Frontier. Salt Lake City: PemberleyKent. p. 108. ISBN 0-9623276-0-3.
17. Chen, Wai-Fah; Duan, Lian (2013). Handbook of International Bridge Engineering. CRC Press. pp. 600–01. ISBN 978-1-4398-1029-3.
18. Pescatore, Jean-Pierre; Borgeot, Jean-Henri (2010). "Chapter 10: Welding Steel Structures". In Blondeau, Regis. Metallurgy and mechanics of welding: processes and industrial application. John Wiley & Sons. p. 359. ISBN 9780470393895.
19. Wojdyga, Piotr (2009). "Mosty firmy K. Rudzki i S-ka" [Bridges of K. Rudzki and Co.] (pdf). Rocznik Mińsko Mazowiecki 2009 (17): 63–74. ISSN 1232-633X. Retrieved 2013-11-07.
20. "Various works by (and about) Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, which are very difficult to obtain elsewhere". Retrieved 2012-05-31.