1943 in science

The year 1943 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Biology

• July 21 – Living specimens of Metasequoia glyptostroboides, the Dawn Redwood, previously known only as a Mesozoic fossil, are located in China.^[1]
• The University of Oxford acquires the nearby Wytham Woods which become an important centre for research into ecology in England.

Computer science

• 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.^[2]
• May 17 – The United States Army contracts with the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School to develop the ENIAC.

Earth sciences

• February 20 – The cinder cone volcano Parícutin begins to appear in Mexico, giving volcanologists an unusual opportunity to observe its complete life cycle.^[3][4][5]

Pharmacology

• 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.^[6]

Psychology

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

Physiology and medicine

• 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.^[7]
• 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.^[8]
• Dr. Willem J. Kolff builds the first dialysis machine, in the occupied Netherlands.^[9]
• New Zealand-born British anaesthetist Robert Reynolds Macintosh introduces his new curved laryngoscope blade for tracheal intubation.^[10][11]

Technology

• 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.^[12]
• Lyle Goodhue and William Sullivan patent the refillable aerosol spray in the United States, for use with mosquito-repellant.^[13]

Awards

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

Births

• January 14 – Ralph Steinman (died 2011), Canadian-born winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (2011).
• April 26 – Christiane Floyd, Austrian-born computer scientist.
• May 9 – Colin Pillinger (died 2014), English astrophysicist.
• June 6 – Richard Smalley (died 2005), American winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1996) for the discovery of a new form of carbon, buckminsterfullerene.
• June 22 – J. Michael Kosterlitz, Scottish-born condensed matter physicist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics (2016).
• July 11 – Hilary Kahn (died 2007), South African-born English computer scientist.
• August 29 – Arthur B. McDonald, Canadian astrophysicist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics (2015).
• September 20 – Richard McGehee, American mathematician working on celestial mechanics.
• December 7 – Nick Katz, American mathematician.
• Steen Willadsen, Danish-born embryologist.

Deaths

• January 5 – George Washington Carver (born c.1864), African American agricultural botanist.
• January 7 – Nikola Tesla (born 1856), Croatian-born 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.
• March 2 – Gisela Januszewska (born 1867), Austrian public health physician (in Theresienstadt concentration camp).
• 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.
• September 23 – John Bradfield (born 1867), Australian civil engineer.
• 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.
• Abraham Buschke (born 1868), German Jewish dermatologist (in Theresienstadt concentration camp).

References