1910 in science

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{{Year nav topic5|1910|science}}

{{Science year nav|1910}}

The year 1910 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

  • January 12 – Great January Comet of 1910 first observed (perihelion: January 17).{{Cite web|last=Bortle|first=J.|title=The Bright Comet Chronicles|website=harvard.edu|url=http://www.icq.eps.harvard.edu/bortle.html|access-date=2008-11-18}}
  • January 22 – At 9:30 in the evening, the Vigarano Meteorite splits as it falls to Earth in Italy at the locality of the same name, near Emilia. Weighing 11.5 kg (or 25 lb.), the stone that is recovered is the first of the CV chondrites named for the location. CV chondrites are described as the oldest rocks in the Solar System.[http://www.site.uottawa.ca:4321/meteorites/index.html#Vigarano University of Ottawa] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080506131050/http://www.site.uottawa.ca:4321/meteorites/index.html#Vigarano |date=2008-05-06 }} meteorites database The other piece of the meteorite, weighing {{Convert|4.5|kg}}, is found a month later.
  • April 10 – Halley's Comet becomes visible with the naked eye (perihelion: April 20);{{cite web|title=Great Comets in History|first=Donald Keith|last=Yeomans|publisher=Jet Propulsion Laboratory|url=http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?great_comets|year=1998|access-date=2007-03-15}} Earth passes through its tail about May 19{{cite web|year=1985|title=Through the comet's tail|work=Revised extracts from "A Comet Called Halley", published by Cambridge University Press in 1985|first=Ian|last=Ridpath|url=http://www.ianridpath.com/halley/halley12.htm|access-date=2011-06-19}} (its next visit will be in 1986).
  • December 30 – A nova (later referred to as DI Lacertae), is spotted in the constellation Lacerta, by Anglican minister and astronomer T. H. E. C. Espin, making him the first human to see the birth of the new star.[http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1911ApJ....33..410F Astrophys. J. 33:410–417 (1911)] "New Star on Milky Way", Washington Post, January 15, 1911, p. 47
  • Approximate date – The Hertzsprung–Russell diagram is developed by Ejnar Hertzsprung and Henry Norris Russell.

Cartography

Chemistry

  • Albert Einstein and Marian Smoluchowski find the Einstein-Smoluchowski formula for the attenuation coefficient due to density fluctuations in a gas.
  • Umetaro Suzuki isolates the first vitamin complex, aberic acid.[http://www.journalarchive.jst.go.jp/english/jnlabstract_en.php?cdjournal=nikkashi1880&cdvol=32&noissue=1&startpage=4 Tokyo Kagaku Kaishi (1911)]{{dead link|date=June 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}
  • Hoechst AG market Arsphenamine under the trade name Salvarsan, the first organic antisyphilitic, its properties having been discovered the previous fall by bacteriologist Sahachiro Hata during systematic testing in the laboratory of Paul Ehrlich; it rapidly becomes the world's most widely prescribed drug.{{cite web|url=http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/83/8325/8325salvarsan.html|title=Salvarsan|work=Chemical & Engineering News|year=2005|publisher=American Chemical Society|accessdate=2011-12-31}}
  • George Barger and James Ewens of Wellcome Laboratories in London first synthesize dopamine.{{cite journal|last=Fahn|first=S.|title=The history of dopamine and levodopa in the treatment of Parkinson's disease|journal=Movement Disorders|volume=23 Suppl 3|pages=S497–508|year=2008|pmid=18781671|doi=10.1002/mds.22028|s2cid=45572523}}
  • Frederick Soddy shows that the radioelements mesothorium (later shown to be 228Ra), radium (226Ra, the longest-lived isotope), and thorium X (224Ra) are impossible to separate, leading to the identification of isotopes.{{cite journal|last=Nagel|first=Miriam C.|title=Frederick Soddy: From Alchemy to Isotopes|journal=Journal of Chemical Education|year=1982|volume=59|pages=739–740|doi=10.1021/ed059p739|issue=9|bibcode = 1982JChEd..59..739N }}

Mathematics

  • Publication of the 1st volume of Principia Mathematica by Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, one of the most important and seminal works in mathematical logic and philosophy.
  • First known use of the term "Econometrics" (in cognate form), by Paweł Ciompa.{{cite book|first=M. Hashem|last=Pesaran|authorlink=M. Hashem Pesaran|year=1987|chapter=Econometrics|title=The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics|volume=2|pages=8–22|title-link=The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics}}

Physics

Physiology and medicine

  • February 3 – The first pyloromyotomy, a surgery to correct the congenital narrowing (in infants) of the path between the stomach and the intestines (pyloric stenosis) is performed in Edinburgh by Sir Harold Stiles; however, the procedure is named for Dr. Wilhelm Ramstedt, who performs the surgery in 1911.{{cite book|first=N. M. A.|last=Bax|display-authors=etal|title=Endoscopic Surgery in Infants and Children|publisher=Springer|year=2008|page=281}}
  • March – International Psychoanalytical Association established.
  • March 20 – The first clinic for treatment of occupational diseases is opened in Milan (Italy). (The first in the United States will be established in 1915.){{cite book|last=Fielding|first=H. Garrison|title=An Introduction to the History of Medicine: With Medical Chronology, Suggestions for Study and Bibliographic Data|publisher=W.B. Saunders Co.|year=1917|page=775}}
  • May 18 – At the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of the Feeble-Minded, Henry H. Goddard introduces a system for classifying individuals with mental retardation based on intelligence quotient (IQ): moron for those with an IQ of 51–70, imbecile for those with an IQ of 26–50, and idiot for those with an IQ of 0-25.
  • July 15 – Publication of the eighth edition of Emil Kraepelin's Psychiatrie: Ein Lehrbuch für Studierende und Arzte, naming Alzheimer's disease as a variety of dementia.{{cite journal|last1=Berchtold|first1=N. C.|last2=Cotman|first2=C. W.|title=Evolution in the conceptualization of dementia and Alzheimer's disease: Greco-Roman period to the 1960s|journal=Neurobiology of Aging|volume=19|issue=3|pages=173–89|year=1998|pmid=9661992|doi=10.1016/S0197-4580(98)00052-9|s2cid=24808582}}
  • October (approx.) – Approximate date of origin of Manchurian plague, a form of pneumonic plague which by December is spreading through northeastern China, killing more than 40,000.{{cite web |url=http://news.sina.com.cn/c/sd/2011-01-14/130221815935.shtml |title=Recalling the 1910 Harbin Plague |work=Sina.com |language=zh}}{{cite journal |first=Mark |last=Gamsa |title=The Epidemic of Pneumonic Plague in Manchuria 1910–1911 |journal=Past & Present | date=February 2006 |volume=190 |issue=1 |pages=147–183 |doi=10.1093/pastj/gtj001}}{{cite journal |author1=Goh, L. G. |author2=Ho, T. M. |author3=Phua, K. H. |title=Wisdom and Western Science: The Work of Dr Wu Lien-Teh |journal=Asia-Pacific Journal of Public Health | doi=10.1177/101053958700100123 |volume=1 |issue=1 |pages=99–109 |series=Historical Milestones |date=January 1987 |pmid=3330665|s2cid=33328996 }}
  • Thomas Hunt Morgan discovers that genes are located on chromosomes.
  • Chicago cardiologist James B. Herrick makes the first published identification of sickle cells in the blood of a patient with anemia.{{cite journal|last=Herrick|first=James B.|title=Peculiar elongated and sickle-shaped red blood corpuscles in a case of severe anemia|journal=Archives of Internal Medicine|volume=6|issue=5|pages=517–521|date=November 1910|doi=10.1001/archinte.1910.00050330050003|pmc=}}; Reprinted in {{cite journal|pmc=2588723 | pmid=11501714 | volume=74 | title=Peculiar elongated and sickle-shaped red blood corpuscles in a case of severe anemia. 1910 | year=2001 | journal=Yale J Biol Med | pages=179–84 | last1 = Herrick | first1 = JB| issue=3 }}
  • Platelets are first named by James Homer Wright.{{cite journal|last=Wright|first=J. H.|title=The histogenesis of blood platelets|journal=Journal of Morphology|year=1910|volume=21|issue=2|pages=263–78|doi=10.1002/jmor.1050210204|hdl=2027/hvd.32044107223588|s2cid=84877594|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/imgsrv/download/pdf?id=hvd.32044107223588;orient=0;size=100;seq=3;attachment=0|hdl-access=free|url-access=subscription}}
  • Peyton Rous demonstrates that a malignant tumor can be transmitted by a virus (which becomes known as the Rous sarcoma virus, a retrovirus).{{cite journal|first=Peyton|last=Rous|title=A Transmissible Avian Neoplasm (Sarcoma of the Common Fowl)|journal=Journal of Experimental Medicine|volume=12|issue=5|pages=696–705|date=1910-09-01|pmc=2124810|pmid=19867354|doi=10.1084/jem.12.5.696|url=http://digitalcommons.ohsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1156&context=hca-cac|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150910230342/http://digitalcommons.ohsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1156&context=hca-cac|url-status=dead|archive-date=September 10, 2015|access-date=2018-11-04}}{{Open access}}{{cite web|title=The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1966 – Peyton Rous – Biography|url=http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1966/rous.html|work=Nobelprize.org|accessdate=2011-10-14}}
  • Hans Christian Jacobaeus of Sweden performs the first thoracoscopic diagnosis with a cystoscope.{{cite journal|first=Hans Christian|last=Jacobaeus|year=1911|title=The Possibilities for Performing Cystoscopy in Examinations of Serous Cavities|journal=Münchner Medizinischen Wochenschrift}}{{cite journal|first=Martin|last=Hatzinger|journal=Journal of Endourology|title=Hans Christian Jacobaeus: Inventor of Human Laparoscopy and Thoracoscopy|volume=20|issue=11|date=4 December 2006|doi=10.1089/end.2006.20.848|pmid=17144849|display-authors=etal|pages=848–850}}

Technology

  • January 12–13 – Lee De Forest conducts an experimental broadcast of part of a live performance of Tosca and, the next day, a performance with the participation of the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso from the stage of Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.{{cite book|last=Kane|first=Joseph Nathan|title=Famous First Facts|edition=4th|location=New York|publisher=The H.W. Wilson Company|year=1981|isbn=978-0-8242-0661-1|page=[https://archive.org/details/famousfirstfacts00kane/page/442 442]|title-link=Famous First Facts}}{{cite web|url=http://archives.metoperafamily.org/archives/frame.htm|title=MetOpera Database|publisher=Metropolitan Opera}}
  • February 17 – A patent for the first safety catch (firearms) is filed by the Browning Arms Company in the United States.U.S. Patent No. 984,519, granted on February 14, 1911. [http://www.romingerlegal.com/new_jersey/appellate/a2527-95.opn.html Hurst v. Glock, Inc.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110927173411/http://www.romingerlegal.com/new_jersey/appellate/a2527-95.opn.html|date=2011-09-27}}, 295 N.J. Super. 165 (1996).
  • February 25 – Thomas Edison's "trolleyless street car", powered by storage batteries rather than by overhead electric wires, is publicly demonstrated on New York City's 29th Street horse car tracks.{{cite news|url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1910/02/26/102036648.pdf|title=Test Edison Car On Crosstown Line|newspaper=The New York Times|date=1910-02-26|page=2}}
  • March 28 – Henri Fabre makes the first flights in a seaplane, at Martigues, France.
  • June 7 – William G. Allen of the Allen Manufacturing Company is granted a United States patent for a hex key.{{US Patent|960244}}
  • October – First publication of infrared photographs, by American optical physicist Robert W. Wood in the Royal Photographic Society's Journal.
  • December 3–18 – Georges Claude demonstrates the first modern neon light at the Paris Motor Show.
  • Lieutenant-Colonel Dr. George Owen Squier of the United States Army invents telephone carrier multiplexing.
  • Completion of Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad's Paulinskill Viaduct on its Lackawanna Cut-Off, the world's largest reinforced concrete structure at this time, built under the supervision of Lincoln Bush, its chief engineer.{{cite book|last=Thompson|first=Sanford E.|title=Concrete in Railroad Construction: A Treatise ... |publisher=Atlas Portland Cement Company|year=1915|page=36}}

Institutions

  • March 17 – The Smithsonian Institution's Natural History Building, later the National Museum of Natural History, opens its doors to the public in Washington, D.C.{{cite web|url=http://www.siarchives.si.edu/history/exhibits/thisday/march.htm|title=This Day in SI History – March|work=Smithsonian Institution Archives|accessdate=2010-04-18|archive-date=2010-06-08|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100608035035/http://siarchives.si.edu/history/exhibits/thisday/march.htm|url-status=dead}}

Awards

Births

Deaths

References

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Category:20th century in science

Category:1910s in science