1929 in science - Definition and Overview

The year 1929 in science and technology included many events, some of which are listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

• Clyde Tombaugh discovers several asteroids: 2839 Annette, 3583 Burdett, 3824 Brendalee, 1929 VS, 1929 VD1.
• Edwin Hubble publishes his discovery that the speed at which galaxies recede positively correlates with their distance, which became known as Hubble's law, the basis for understanding that the universe is expanding.
• George Gamow proposes hydrogen fusion as the energy source for stars.
• Konstantin Tsiolkovsky proposes the construction of staged rockets in his book Космические поезда (Cosmic Trains).

Aviation

• July 5 - The Curtiss-Wright corporation is founded.
• August 8 - The German airship Graf Zeppelin begins a round-the-world flight (will end on August 29).
• November 29 - US Admiral Richard Byrd becomes the first person to fly over the South Pole.
• December 5 - Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation is founded.

Biology

• Professor Gericke of the University of California, Los Angeles demonstrates that plants can be grown soil-free all the way to maturity, the basis of hydroponics.

Chemistry

• Sir John Lennard-Jones introduces his linear combination of atomic orbitals molecular orbital method for aproximation of molecular orbitals.
• Lars Onsager publishes his reciprocal relations equations in thermodynamics, for which he received the 1968 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Communications

• Rudolf Hell receives a patent for the Hellschreiber, an early fax machine.
• First practical coaxial cable patented by Lloyd Espenschied and Herman Affe of AT&T's Bell Telephone Laboratories.

Geology

• November 18 - 1929 Grand Banks earthquake: Off the south coast of Newfoundland in the Atlantic Ocean, a Richter magnitude 7.2 submarine earthquake centered on Grand Banks, breaks 12 submarine transatlantic telegraph cables and triggers a tsunami that destroys many south coast communities in the Burin Peninsula area.

Mathematics

• Kurt Gödel proves his completeness theorem.

Medicine

• Alexander Fleming publishes an article about penicillin in the British Journal of Experimental Pathology, for which he received the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Physics

• Robert J. Van de Graaff develops the Van de Graaff generator.
• Oskar Klein discovers the Klein paradox.
• Oskar Klein and Y. Nishina derive the Klein-Nishina cross section for high energy photon scattering by electrons.
• Sir Nevill Francis Mott derives the Mott cross section for the Coulomb scattering of relativistic electrons.
• Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac and Werner Karl Heisenberg develop the quantum theory of ferromagnetism.
• Ernest O. Lawrence invents the cyclotron, for which he received the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Awards

• Nobel Prize
  • Physics: Prince Louis-Victor Pierre Raymond de Broglie
  • Chemistry: Arthur Harden, Hans Karl August Simon von Euler-Chelpin
  • Physiology or Medicine: Christiaan Eijkman, Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins

Births

• April 22 - Sir Michael Francis Atiyah, mathematician.
• May 21 - Andrei Sakharov (d. 1989), nuclear physicist.
• June 10 - Edward Osborne Wilson, entomologist.
• July 1 - Gerald Edelman, biologist.
• September 5 - Andrian Nikolayev (d. 2004), cosmonaut.
• September 15 - Murray Gell-Mann, physicist, 1969 Nobel laureate in physics.
• November 7 - Eric R. Kandel, neurobiology researcher and Nobel laureate.

Deaths

• February 3 - A. K. Erlang (b. 1878), mathematician.
• March 6 - David Buick, automobile pioneer.
• April 4 - Karl Benz (b. 1844), German automotive pioneer.
• August 27 - Herman Potočnik Noordung (b. 1892), Slovene pioneer of astronautics and cosmonautics.
• November 17 - Herman Hollerith (b. 1860), statistician, punch card inventor.