1944 in science explained

The year 1944 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

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

Biology

• 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

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

Computer science

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

Geology

• March 18 – Last eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

History of science

• 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

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

Medicine

• 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

• 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

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

Technology

• 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

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

Births

• 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

• 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.
• 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.

Notes and References

1. 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. Avery. Oswald T.. MacLeod. Colin M.. McCarty. Maclyn. Journal of Experimental Medicine. 1944-02-01. 79. Rockefeller University Press. 137–158. 19871359. 2135445. 10.1084/jem.79.2.137. 2. (Received for publication 1 November 1943.)
2. Book: Fruton, Joseph S.. Proteins, Enzymes, Genes: the interplay of chemistry and biology. Yale University Press. New Haven, Conn. 1999. 0-300-07608-8. 438–440.
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. 10.1093/jnci/4.5.461.
4. News: Yoon. Carol Kaesuk. Donald R. Griffin, 88, Dies; Argued Animals Can Think. The New York Times. 2003-11-14. 2010-07-16.
5. Book: Guggisberg, Charles Albert Walter. Simba: the life of the lion. 1961. Howard Timmins. Cape Town.
6. Crystal Statistics. I. A Two-Dimensional Model with an Order-Disorder Transition. Physical Review. 65. 117–149. 10.1103/PhysRev.65.117. 1944PhRv...65..117O. 1944. Onsager. Lars. 3–4.
7. Book: Asperger, H.. 1944. 'Autistic psychopathy' in childhood. Frith, Uta. Autism and Asperger Syndrome. limited. 1991. Cambridge University Press. 0-521-38448-6. 37–92.
8. Book: Heinz, W. C.. Inventor: the Dave Sheridan Story. 1988. Albany Medical Center. Albany, New York.
9. Book: Peoples. James. Bailey. Garrick. Humanity: An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology. 2014. Cengage. 9781285733371. 410.
10. Web site: Ett fenomen som gäckar vetenskapen. sv. Uppsala University. Anders. Larsson. 2002-04-23. 2016-01-05.
11. Book: Sedig, Kjell. 2002. Swedish Innovations. Stockholm. The Swedish Institute. 45. 91-520-0910-6.
12. Book: Neufeld, Michael J.. The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era. registration. The Free Press. 1995. New York. 158, 160–162, 190.
13. Web site: 6 Women Scientists Who Were Snubbed Due to Sexism . https://web.archive.org/web/20190903184929/https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/5/130519-women-scientists-overlooked-dna-history-science/ . dead . September 3, 2019 . National Geographic News . 19 January 2021 . 19 May 2013.
14. March 1944. Emily Winifred Dickson Martin. The Lancet. 243. 6288. 327. 10.1016/S0140-6736(00)42291-9.
15. Book: Brentari, Carlo. Jakob von Uexküll: The Discovery of the Umwelt between Biosemiotics and Theoretical Biology. Springer. 2015.