1944 in science

Overview of the events of 1944 in science

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1944 in science

1943

1945

Fields

* Archaeology

Technology

* Sustainable energy research
* Transportation technology

Social sciences

* Psychology
* Governance and policy studies

Paleontology

* Dinosaurs' extinction

Extraterrestrial environment
Terrestrial environment

* Tornado research

Other/related

* Literature
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* Timeline of cosmological theories
* List of open letters by academics
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The year 1944 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

## Astronomy

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* Hendrik van de Hulst predicts the 21 cm hyperfine line of neutral interstellar hydrogen.

## Biology

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* February 1 – Oswald T. Avery and colleagues publish the Avery–MacLeod–McCarty experiment[1] showing that a DNA molecule can carry an inheritable trait to a living organism. This is important because many biologists thought that proteins were the hereditary material and nucleic acids too simple chemically to serve as genetic storage molecules.[2]
* The lipopolysaccharide character of enteric endotoxins is elucidated by M. J. Shear.[3]
* Erwin Schrödinger publishes What is Life?, containing conceptual discussion of the genetic code and of negentropy.
* Donald Griffin with G. W. Pierce demonstrate that bats use high-frequency sound in a technique which Griffin describes as echolocation.[4]
* Last known evidence for existence of the Asiatic lion in the wild in Iran (Khuzestan province).[5]

## Chemistry

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* February – Lars Onsager publishes the exact solution to the two-dimensional Ising model.[6]
* Americium discovered by Glenn T. Seaborg, et al.

## Computer science

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* August 7 – IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, best known as the Harvard Mark I.

## Geology

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* March 18 – Last eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

## History of science

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* November 4 – The Whipple Museum of the History of Science is established when Robert Whipple presents his collection of scientific instruments to the University of Cambridge, England.
* C. Doris Hellman publishes her Columbia University thesis The Comet of 1577: Its Place in the History of Astronomy.

## Mathematics

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* John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern's book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior is published by Princeton University Press.

## Medicine

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* November 19 – Minnesota Starvation Experiment begins.
* Hans Asperger describes Asperger syndrome.[7]
* David S. Sheridan invents the disposable plastic tracheal tube catheter.[8]
* Dorothea and Alexander Leighton's book Navajo at the Door is "the earliest example of applied medical anthropology".[9]

## Meteorology

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* June 5 – Group Captain James Stagg correctly forecasts a brief improvement in weather conditions over the English Channel which permits the following day's Normandy landings to take place.
* August 6 – Ball lightning observed in Uppsala, Sweden.[10]

## Physics

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* November 6 – Hanford Site in Washington (state) produces its first plutonium.

## Technology

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* March 27 – In Sweden, Ruben Rausing patents Erik Wallenberg's method of packaging milk in paper, origin of the company Tetra Pak.[11]
* June 13 – First operational use of the German V-1 flying bomb, the first operational cruise missile, containing a gyroscope guidance system and propelled by a simple pulsejet engine.
* September 8 – First operational use of the German V-2 rocket, the first ballistic missile. On June 20 one has become the first man-made object to cross the Kármán line and reach the edge of space.[12]
* December 9 – First flight of the Heinkel He 162 Volksjäger, the second jet engined fighter aircraft to be introduced by the Luftwaffe in World War II.
* First operational use of a snorkel on a submarine.

## Awards

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* Nobel Prizes
* Physics – Isidor Isaac Rabi
* Chemistry – Otto Hahn[13]
* Medicine – Joseph Erlanger, Herbert Spencer Gasser

## Births

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* February 8 – Howard Dalton (died 2008), English microbiologist.
* February 15 – Sigurd Hofmann, German physicist.
* March 7 – Michael Rosbash, American geneticist and chronobiologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
* June 1 – Colin Blakemore, English neurobiologist (died 2022).
* June 5 – Whitfield Diffie, American cryptographer.
* June 6 – Phillip Allen Sharp, American geneticist and molecular biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
* June 22 – Gérard Mourou, French electrical engineer, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
* July 13 – Ernő Rubik, Hungarian inventor and architect.
* August 24 – Gregory Jarvis (died 1986), American astronaut.
* October 11 – William T. Greenough (died 2013), American neuroscientist.
* October 16 – Elizabeth Loftus, American psychologist.
* October 21 – Jean-Pierre Sauvage, French coordination chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
* December 19 – Richard Leakey (died 2022), Kenyan palaeoanthropologist.
* December 28 – Kary Mullis (died 2019), American biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

## Deaths

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* January 19 – Emily Winifred Dickson (born 1866), British gynaecologist.[14]
* January 20 – James McKeen Cattell (born 1860), American psychologist.
* February 8 – Bernard Sachs (born 1858), American neurologist.
* March – John R. F. Jeffreys (born 1918), British mathematician and cryptanalysist (tuberculosis).
* March 2 – Ida Maclean (born 1877), English biochemist.
* March 5 – Ernst Cohen (born 1869), Dutch Jewish chemist (in Auschwitz concentration camp).
* March 29 – Grace Chisholm Young (born 1868), English mathematician.
* April 16 – Percy Lane Oliver (born 1878), British pioneer of voluntary blood donation
* August 23 – Margarete Zuelzer (born 1877), German Jewish microbiologist (in Westerbork transit camp).
* June 18 – Harry Fielding Reid (born 1859), American geophysicist.
* July 25 – Jakob Johann von Uexküll (born 1864), Baltic German pioneer of biosemiotics.[15]
* November 2 – Thomas Midgley Jr. (born 1889), American chemist and inventor.
* November 22 – Sir Arthur Eddington (born 1882), English astrophysicist.

## References

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1. ^ Avery, Oswald T.; MacLeod, Colin M.; McCarty, Maclyn (1944-02-01). "Studies on the Chemical Nature of the Substance Inducing Transformation of Pneumococcal Types: Induction of TransFormation by a Desoxyribonucleic Acid Fraction Isolated from Pneumococcus Type III". Journal of Experimental Medicine. 79 (2). Rockefeller University Press: 137–158\. doi:10.1084/jem.79.2.137. PMC 2135445. PMID 19871359. (Received for publication 1 November 1943.)
2. ^ Fruton, Joseph S. (1999). Proteins, Enzymes, Genes: the interplay of chemistry and biology. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press. pp. 438–440\. ISBN 0-300-07608-8.
3. ^ Shear, M. J. (1944). "Chemical treatment of tumors, IX: Reactions of mice with primary subcutaneous tumors to injection of a hemorrhage-producing bacterial polysaccharide". Journal of the National Cancer Institute. 4 (5): 461–76\. doi:10.1093/jnci/4.5.461.
4. ^ Yoon, Carol Kaesuk (2003-11-14). "Donald R. Griffin, 88, Dies; Argued Animals Can Think". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-07-16.
5. ^ Guggisberg, Charles Albert Walter (1961). Simba: the life of the lion. Cape Town: Howard Timmins.
6. ^ Onsager, Lars (1944). "Crystal Statistics. I. A Two-Dimensional Model with an Order-Disorder Transition". Physical Review. 65 (3–4): 117–149\. Bibcode:1944PhRv...65..117O. doi:10.1103/PhysRev.65.117.3–4&rft.pages=117-149&rft.date=1944&rft_id=info:doi/10.1103/PhysRev.65.117&rft_id=info:bibcode/1944PhRv...65..117O&rft.aulast=Onsager&rft.aufirst=Lars&rfr_id=info:sid/en.wikipedia.org:1944+in+science" class="Z3988">
7. ^ Asperger, H. (1991) [1944]. "'Autistic psychopathy' in childhood". In Frith, Uta (ed.). Autism and Asperger Syndrome. Cambridge University Press. pp. 37–92. ISBN 0-521-38448-6.
8. ^ Heinz, W. C. (1988). Inventor: the Dave Sheridan Story. Albany, New York: Albany Medical Center.
9. ^ Peoples, James; Bailey, Garrick (2014). Humanity: An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. Cengage. p. 410\. ISBN 9781285733371.
10. ^ Larsson, Anders (2002-04-23). "Ett fenomen som gäckar vetenskapen" (in Swedish). Uppsala University. Retrieved 2016-01-05.
11. ^ Sedig, Kjell (2002). Swedish Innovations. Stockholm: The Swedish Institute. p. 45\. ISBN 91-520-0910-6.
12. ^ Neufeld, Michael J. (1995). The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era. New York: The Free Press. pp. 158, 160–162, 190.
13. ^ "6 Women Scientists Who Were Snubbed Due to Sexism". National Geographic News. 19 May 2013. Archived from the original on September 3, 2019. Retrieved 19 January 2021.
14. ^ "Emily Winifred Dickson Martin". The Lancet. 243 (6288): 327. March 1944. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(00)42291-9.
15. ^ Brentari, Carlo (2015). Jakob von Uexküll: The Discovery of the Umwelt between Biosemiotics and Theoretical Biology. Springer.

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