1948 in science
Encyclopedia
The year 1948 in science
and technology
involved some significant events, listed below.
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
and technology
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
involved some significant events, listed below.
Biology
- October 5 - Delegates to a conference organised by Sir Julian HuxleyJulian HuxleySir Julian Sorell Huxley FRS was an English evolutionary biologist, humanist and internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century evolutionary synthesis...
at FontainebleauFontainebleauFontainebleau is a commune in the metropolitan area of Paris, France. It is located south-southeast of the centre of Paris. Fontainebleau is a sub-prefecture of the Seine-et-Marne department, and it is the seat of the arrondissement of Fontainebleau...
agree to formation of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. - August 7 - Teaching and research in MendelianMendelian inheritanceMendelian inheritance is a scientific description of how hereditary characteristics are passed from parent organisms to their offspring; it underlies much of genetics...
geneticsGeneticsGenetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
is prohbited in the Soviet UnionSoviet UnionThe Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
in favour of LysenkoistLysenkoismLysenkoism, or Lysenko-Michurinism, also denotes the biological inheritance principle which Trofim Lysenko subscribed to and which derive from theories of the heritability of acquired characteristics, a body of biological inheritance theory which departs from Mendelism and that Lysenko named...
theories of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. - November 20 - The TakahēTakaheThe Takahē or South Island Takahē, Porphyrio hochstetteri is a flightless bird indigenous to New Zealand and belonging to the rail family. It was thought to be extinct after the last four known specimens were taken in 1898...
, generally thought to have been extinct for fifty years, is rediscovered by Geoffrey OrbellGeoffrey OrbellGeoffrey Buckland Orbell was a doctor and keen tramper/bush walker best known for the rediscovery of the Takahē in 1948. The Takahē was widely thought to be extinct but Orbell suspected it might survive. While taking time off from his Invercargill practice to search for the Takahē, he discovered a...
near Lake Te AnauLake Te AnauLake Te Anau is in the southwestern corner of the South Island of New Zealand. Its name was originally Te Ana-au, Maori for 'The cave of swirling water'. The lake covers an area of 344 km², making it the second-largest lake by surface area in New Zealand and the largest in the South Island...
in the South IslandSouth IslandThe South Island is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand, the other being the more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman Sea, to the south and east by the Pacific Ocean...
of New ZealandNew ZealandNew Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
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Computer science
- June 21 - World's first working programComputer programA computer program is a sequence of instructions written to perform a specified task with a computer. A computer requires programs to function, typically executing the program's instructions in a central processor. The program has an executable form that the computer can use directly to execute...
run on an electronic stored-program computerStored-program computerA stored-program computer is one which stores program instructions in electronic memory. Often the definition is extended with the requirement that the treatment of programs and data in memory be interchangeable or uniform....
, the Manchester Small-Scale Experimental Machine ("Baby") (written by Tom KilburnTom KilburnTom Kilburn CBE, FRS was an English engineer. With Freddie Williams he worked on the Williams Tube and the world's first stored-program computer, the Small-Scale Experimental Machine , while working at the University of Manchester.-Computer engineering:Kilburn was born in Dewsbury, Yorkshire and...
). - July–October - Claude E. Shannon publishes "A Mathematical Theory of CommunicationA Mathematical Theory of Communication"A Mathematical Theory of Communication" is an influential 1948 article by mathematician Claude E. Shannon. As of November 2011, Google Scholar has listed more than 48,000 unique citations of the article and the later-published book version...
" in Bell System Technical JournalBell System Technical JournalThe Bell System Technical Journal was the in-house scientific journal of Bell Labs that was published from 1922 to 1983.- Notable papers :...
, regarded as a foundation of information theoryInformation theoryInformation theory is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of information. Information theory was developed by Claude E. Shannon to find fundamental limits on signal processing operations such as compressing data and on reliably storing and...
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Medicine and human sciences
- July 5 - The National Health ServiceNational Health ServiceThe National Health Service is the shared name of three of the four publicly funded healthcare systems in the United Kingdom. They provide a comprehensive range of health services, the vast majority of which are free at the point of use to residents of the United Kingdom...
begins functioning in the United KingdomUnited KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, giving the right to universal healthcare, free at point of use. - In psychologyPsychologyPsychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
, Bertram ForerBertram ForerBertram R. Forer was an American psychologist best known for describing the Forer effect, sometimes referred to as subjective validation....
demonstrates the Forer effectForer effectThe Forer effect is the observation that individuals will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people...
(that people tend to accept generalised descriptions of personality as uniquely applicable to themselves). - Kinsey ReportKinsey ReportsThe Kinsey Reports are two books on human sexual behavior, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female , by Dr. Alfred Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy and others and published by Saunders...
, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, is published in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
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Physics
- Herbert FröhlichHerbert FröhlichHerbert Fröhlich was a German-born British physicist and a Fellow of the Royal Society....
makes a key breakthrough in understanding superconductivitySuperconductivitySuperconductivity is a phenomenon of exactly zero electrical resistance occurring in certain materials below a characteristic temperature. It was discovered by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes on April 8, 1911 in Leiden. Like ferromagnetism and atomic spectral lines, superconductivity is a quantum...
, at the University of LiverpoolUniversity of LiverpoolThe University of Liverpool is a teaching and research university in the city of Liverpool, England. It is a member of the Russell Group of large research-intensive universities and the N8 Group for research collaboration. Founded in 1881 , it is also one of the six original "red brick" civic...
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Technology
- June 19 - Columbia RecordsColumbia RecordsColumbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
unveil the LP recordLP recordThe LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
s developed by Peter GoldmarkPeter Carl GoldmarkPeter Carl Goldmark was a German-Hungarian engineer who, during his time with Columbia Records, was instrumental in developing the long-playing microgroove 33-1/3 rpm vinyl phonograph disc, the standard for incorporating multiple or lengthy recorded works on a single disc for two generations...
of CBS LaboratoriesCBS LaboratoriesCBS Laboratories or CBS Labs was the technology research and development organization of CBS...
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Awards
- Nobel PrizeNobel PrizeThe Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
s- PhysicsNobel Prize in PhysicsThe Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...
- Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett - ChemistryNobel Prize in ChemistryThe Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outstanding contributions in chemistry, physics, literature,...
- Arne Wilhelm Kaurin Tiselius - MedicineNobel Prize in Physiology or MedicineThe Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine administered by the Nobel Foundation, is awarded once a year for outstanding discoveries in the field of life science and medicine. It is one of five Nobel Prizes established in 1895 by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, in his will...
- Paul Hermann MüllerPaul Hermann MüllerPaul Hermann Müller also known as Pauly Mueller was a Swiss chemist and Nobel laureate. In 1948 he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his 1939 discovery of insecticidal qualities and use of DDT in the control of vector diseases such as malaria and yellow fever.Müller was born...
- Physics
Births
- March 9 - Laszlo LovaszLászló LovászLászló Lovász is a Hungarian mathematician, best known for his work in combinatorics, for which he was awarded the Wolf Prize and the Knuth Prize in 1999, and the Kyoto Prize in 2010....
, computer scientistComputer scientistA computer scientist is a scientist who has acquired knowledge of computer science, the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their application in computer systems....
. - September 2 - Christa McAuliffeChrista McAuliffeChrista McAuliffe was an American teacher from Concord, New Hampshire, and was one of the seven crew members killed in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster....
(d. 19861986 in scienceThe year 1986 in science and technology involved many significant events, some listed below.-Astronomy and space exploration:* January 24 – Voyager 2 space probe makes first encounter with Uranus....
), astronautAstronautAn astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....
. - October 29 - Frans de WaalFrans de WaalFransiscus Bernardus Maria de Waal, PhD , is a Dutch primatologist and ethologist. He is the Charles Howard Candler professor of Primate Behavior in the Emory University psychology department in Atlanta, Georgia, and director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research...
, primatologist.
Deaths
- June 21 - D'Arcy Wentworth ThompsonD'Arcy Wentworth ThompsonSir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson CB FRS FRSE was a Scottish biologist, mathematician, and classics scholar. A pioneering mathematical biologist, he is mainly remembered as the author of the 1917 book On Growth and Form, written largely in Dundee in 1915...
(b. 18601860 in scienceThe year 1860 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Biology:* June 30 - Debate about evolution at the Oxford University Museum.* John Curtis publishes in Glasgow.-Botany:...
), ScottishScottish peopleThe Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...
biologistBiologistA biologist is a scientist devoted to and producing results in biology through the study of life. Typically biologists study organisms and their relationship to their environment. Biologists involved in basic research attempt to discover underlying mechanisms that govern how organisms work...
. - December 12 - Marjory StephensonMarjory StephensonMarjory Stephenson, MBE, FRS was a British biochemist. She was one of the first two women elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1945....
(b. 18851885 in scienceThe year 1885 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Astronomy:* August 20 - Ernst Hartwig discovers S Andromedae, a supernova in the Andromeda galaxy, the first supernova discovered beyond the Milky Way.-Biology:...
), EnglishEnglish peopleThe English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...
biochemistBiochemistBiochemists are scientists who are trained in biochemistry. Typical biochemists study chemical processes and chemical transformations in living organisms. The prefix of "bio" in "biochemist" can be understood as a fusion of "biological chemist."-Role:...
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