1943 in science

• July 21 – Living specimens of Metasequoia glyptostroboides, the Dawn Redwood, previously known only as a Mesozoic fossil, are located in China.{{cite journal|first1=Jinshuang|last1=Ma|first2=Guofan|last2=Shao|title=Rediscovery of the 'first collection' of the 'Living Fossil', Metasequoia glyptostroboides|journal=Taxon|volume=52|issue=3|year=2003|pages=585–8|doi=10.2307/3647458|jstor=3647458}}
• The University of Oxford acquires the nearby Wytham Woods which become an important centre for research into ecology in England.
• David Lack's study The Life of the Robin is published in England.

• March–December – Construction of British prototype Mark I Colossus computer, the world's first totally electronic programmable computing device, at the Post Office Research Station, Dollis Hill, to assist in cryptanalysis at Bletchley Park.{{cite book|year=2006|editor-last=Copeland|editor-first=B. Jack|title=Colossus: the Secrets of Bletchley Park's Codebreaking Computers|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-284055-4}}
• May 17 – The United States Army contracts with the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School to develop the ENIAC.

• February 20 – The cinder cone volcano Parícutin begins to appear in Mexico, giving volcanologists an unusual opportunity to observe its complete life cycle.{{cite web|url=http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/Paricutin.html|title=The Eruption of Parícutin (1943-1952)|website=How Volcanoes Work|access-date=2012-10-23|archive-date=2007-06-04|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070604150645/http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/Paricutin.html|url-status=dead}}{{cite web|url=http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/img_paricutin.html|title=Parícutin, Mexico|website=Volcano World|access-date=2012-10-23|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120206080150/http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/img_paricutin.html|archive-date=2012-02-06|url-status=dead}}{{cite web|url=http://www.mnh.si.edu/onehundredyears/expeditions/Paricutin.html|title=Parícutin: The Birth of a Volcano|publisher=Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History|access-date=2012-10-23|archive-date=2013-01-03|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130103191416/http://www.mnh.si.edu/onehundredyears/expeditions/Paricutin.html|url-status=dead}}

• January 1 – Project Y, the Manhattan Project's secret laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico, for development and production of the first atomic bombs under the direction of J. Robert Oppenheimer, begins operations.

• March 23 – The drugs Vicodin and Lortab are made in Germany.
• October 19 – The antibiotic streptomycin (the first antibiotic remedy for tuberculosis) is first isolated by Albert Schatz in the laboratory of Selman Abraham Waksman at Rutgers University in the United States.{{cite journal|author =Comroe, J. H. Jr|title=Pay dirt: the story of streptomycin. Part I: from Waksman to Waksman|journal=American Review of Respiratory Disease|year=1978|volume=117|issue=4|pages=773–781|pmid=417651|doi=10.1164/arrd.1978.117.4.773|doi-broken-date=1 November 2024}}
• December – Winston Churchill's recurring bacterial pneumonia is successfully treated with the sulphapyridine M&B 693, a first-generation sulphonamide antibiotic.{{cite web|title=Surviving War; Declining Health|url=http://lincolnandchurchill.org/surviving-war-declining-health/|website=Lincoln & Churchill|publisher=Lehrman Institute|access-date=2017-01-21|date=2013-11-07}}
• A golden mould, Penicillium chrysogenum, growing on an American cantaloupe in Peoria, Illinois, is found to be ideal for mass production of penicillin.{{cite journal|last=Neushul|first=P.|date=1993|title=Science, government, and the mass production of penicillin|url=https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8283024|journal=Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences|volume=48|issue=4 |pages=371–395|doi=10.1093/jhmas/48.4.371|pmid=8283024}}

• Abraham Maslow proposes the Hierarchy of Needs theory of psychology in his paper "A Theory of Human Motivation".

• April 16–19 – Albert Hofmann discovers the hallucinogenic properties of lysergic acid diethylamide.{{cite web|url=http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hallucinogenic-effects-of-lsd-discovered|title=Hallucinogenic effects of LSD discovered|publisher=The History Channel|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140311115603/http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hallucinogenic-effects-of-lsd-discovered|archive-date=2014-03-11}}
• Leo Kanner of the Johns Hopkins Hospital first publicly adopts the term autism in its modern sense in English in referring to early infantile autism.{{cite journal|last=Kanner|first=L.|title=Autistic disturbances of affective contact|journal=Nervous Child|volume=2|pages=217–50|year=1943|issue=4|pmid=4880460}} Reprinted in: {{cite journal|year=1968|journal=Acta Paedopsychiatrica|volume=35|issue=4|pages=100–36|pmid=4880460|author =|title=none}}
• Warren S. McCulloch and Walter Pitts publish "A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity" in Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics, considered seminal in neural network theory.{{cite web|first=Ken|last=Aizawa|year=2004|url=http://philosophy.uwaterloo.ca/MindDict/mcculloch.html|title=McCulloch, Warren Sturgis|website=Dictionary of the Philosophy of Mind|access-date=2011-12-03}}
• Dr. Willem J. Kolff builds the first dialysis machine, in the occupied Netherlands.{{cite news|last=Moore|first=Carrie A.|url=http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,705284493,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090217040141/http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,705284493,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=February 17, 2009|title=Kolff, 'father of artificial organs,' dies at 97|newspaper=Deseret News|location=Salt Lake City|date=2009-02-11|access-date=2012-06-13}}
• New Zealand-born British anaesthetist Robert Macintosh introduces his new curved laryngoscope blade for tracheal intubation.{{cite journal|first=R. R.|last=Macintosh|title=A new laryngoscope|journal=The Lancet|volume=241|issue=6233|pages=205|year=1943|doi=10.1016/S0140-6736(00)89390-3}}{{cite journal|last1=Scott|first1=J.|last2=Baker|first2=P. A.|title=How did the Macintosh laryngoscope become so popular?|journal=Pediatric Anesthesia|volume=19|issue=Supplement 1|pages=24–9|year=2009|pmid=19572841|doi=10.1111/j.1460-9592.2009.03026.x|s2cid=6345531|doi-access=free}}

• March 5 – The Gloster Meteor, the first operational military jet aircraft for the Allies of World War II, has its first test flight, in England.
• May 16–17 – Operation Chastise: British Royal Air Force attacks German dams using 'bouncing bombs' designed by Barnes Wallis.{{cite book|last=Flower|first=Stephen|year=2002|title=A Hell Of A Bomb|publisher=Tempus|isbn=978-0-7524-2386-9}}
• Lyle Goodhue and William Sullivan patent the refillable aerosol spray in the United States, for use with mosquito–repellant.{{cite book|editor1=McGrath, Kimberley A.|editor2=Travers, Bridget E.|title=World of Invention|url=http://www.bookrags.com/research/aerosol-spray-woi/|publisher=Thomson Gale |location=Detroit |isbn=978-0-7876-2759-1|access-date=27 June 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110605044031/http://www.bookrags.com/research/aerosol-spray-woi/|archive-date=5 June 2011|url-status=live|year=1999}}
• Krueger flaps for aircraft wings are invented by Werner Krüger and evaluated in the wind tunnels in Göttingen.

• Nobel Prizes
• Physics – Otto Stern
• Chemistry – George de Hevesy
• Medicine – Carl Peter Henrik Dam, Edward Adelbert Doisy

• January 14 – Ralph Steinman (died 2011), Canadian-born cell biologist, awarded Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (2011).
• April 26 – Christiane Floyd, Austrian-born computer scientist.
• May 9 – Colin Pillinger (died 2014), English astrophysicist.
• May 14 – Richard Peto, English epidemiologist.
• June 6 – Richard Smalley (died 2005), American organic chemist, recipient of Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1996) for discovery of buckminsterfullerene.
• June 16 – Nancy Doe Hopkins, American molecular biologist and advocate for women in science.
• June 22 – J. Michael Kosterlitz, Scottish-born condensed matter physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics (2016).
• June 23 – Vint Cerf, American Internet pioneer.
• July 11 – Hilary Kahn (died 2007), South African-born English computer scientist.
• August 3 – Masato Sagawa, Japanese inventor.
• August 10 – Louis E. Brus, American chemist, recipient of Nobel Prize in Chemistry (2023).
• August 29 – Arthur B. McDonald, Canadian astrophysicist, recipient of Nobel Prize in Physics (2015).
• September 20 – Richard McGehee, American mathematician working on celestial mechanics.
• December 7 – Nick Katz, American mathematician.
• Mary Lake Polan, American obstetrician and gynecologist.
• Steen Willadsen, Danish-born embryologist.

• January 5 – George Washington Carver (born c.1864), African American agricultural botanist.
• January 7 – Nikola Tesla (born 1856), Serbian American inventor.
• January 24 – Carl Brigham (born 1890), American pioneer of psychometrics.
• January 26 – Nikolai Vavilov (born 1887), Russian plant pathologist (in prison).
• February 14 – David Hilbert (born 1862), German mathematician.
• February 20 – Ernest Guglielminetti (born 1862), Swiss physician{{in lang|it|fr|de}} {{Cite web |last=Heldner |first=Paul |title=Guglielminetti, Ernest |url=http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/f/F14394.php |publisher=Dictionnaire historique de la Suisse |date =21 July 2005 |accessdate = 13 February 2021 }}
• February 23 – Abraham Buschke (born 1868), German Jewish dermatologist (in Theresienstadt concentration camp).
• March 2 – Gisela Januszewska (born 1867), Austrian public health physician (in Theresienstadt concentration camp).{{cite book|first=Ingrid|last=Arias|title=Im Dienste der Volksgesundheit: Frauen – Gesundheitswesen – Nationalsozialismus|trans-title=In the Service of Public Health: Women, Healthcare, Nazism|location=Vienna|publisher=Verlagshaus der Ärzte|year=2006|page=87|isbn=978-3-90148-886-3|language=DE}}
• March 28 – Robert W. Paul (born 1869), English pioneer of cinematography.
• April 8 – Kiyotsugu Hirayama (born 1874), Japanese astronomer.
• June 26 – Karl Landsteiner (born 1868), Austrian-born American Jewish physiologist.
• July 5 – Charles Gandy (born 1872), French physician.
• July 7 – Hugh Whistler (born 1889), English ornithologist of India.
• September 23 – John Bradfield (born 1867), Australian civil engineer.
• September 30 – Carl Edvard Johansson (born 1864), Swedish metrologist.
• October 1 – Albert Stewart Meek (born 1871), English-born Australian ornithologist.
• November 14 – Frank Leverett (born 1859), American glaciologist.
• November 20 – Bertha Lamme Feicht (born 1869), American electrical engineer.

{{reflist}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:1943 In Science}}

Category:20th century in science

Category:1940s in science