1932 in science
Encyclopedia
The year 1932 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.
Astronomy and space sciences
- EstoniaEstoniaEstonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...
n astronomer Ernst ÖpikErnst ÖpikErnst Julius Öpik was a noted Estonian astronomer and astrophysicist who spent the second half of his career at the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland.-Education:...
postulates that long-period comets originate in an orbiting cloud (the Öpik–Oort cloudOort cloudThe Oort cloud , or the Öpik–Oort cloud , is a hypothesized spherical cloud of comets which may lie roughly 50,000 AU, or nearly a light-year, from the Sun. This places the cloud at nearly a quarter of the distance to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun...
) at the outermost edge of the Solar SystemSolar SystemThe Solar System consists of the Sun and the astronomical objects gravitationally bound in orbit around it, all of which formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun...
.
Biology
- Geneticist J. B. S. HaldaneJ. B. S. HaldaneJohn Burdon Sanderson Haldane FRS , known as Jack , was a British-born geneticist and evolutionary biologist. A staunch Marxist, he was critical of Britain's role in the Suez Crisis, and chose to leave Oxford and moved to India and became an Indian citizen...
publishes The Causes of Evolution, unifying the findings of Mendelian geneticsGeneticsGenetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
with those of evolutionEvolutionEvolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
ary science. - Physiologist Walter Bradford CannonWalter Bradford CannonWalter Bradford Cannon, M.D. was an American physiologist, professor and chairman of the Department of Physiology at Harvard Medical School. He coined the term fight or flight response, and he expanded on Claude Bernard's concept of homeostasis...
develops and popularises the concept of homeostasisHomeostasisHomeostasis is the property of a system that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, constant condition of properties like temperature or pH...
in his book The Wisdom of the Body.
Earth sciences
- BraggiteBraggiteBraggite is a sulfide mineral of platinum, palladium and nickel with chemical formula: S. It is a dense , steel grey, opaque mineral which crystallizes in the tetragonal crystal system...
is first described, the first mineral discovered with the assistance of X rays.
Mathematics
- Menger-Nöbeling theorem.
- December - Marian RejewskiMarian RejewskiMarian Adam Rejewski was a Polish mathematician and cryptologist who in 1932 solved the plugboard-equipped Enigma machine, the main cipher device used by Germany...
of the PolishPolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
Biuro SzyfrówBiuro SzyfrówThe Biuro Szyfrów was the interwar Polish General Staff's agency charged with both cryptography and cryptology ....
applies pure mathematics – permutation groupPermutation groupIn mathematics, a permutation group is a group G whose elements are permutations of a given set M, and whose group operation is the composition of permutations in G ; the relationship is often written as...
theory – to breaking the German armed forcesWehrmachtThe Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
' Enigma machineEnigma machineAn Enigma machine is any of a family of related electro-mechanical rotor cipher machines used for the encryption and decryption of secret messages. Enigma was invented by German engineer Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I...
ciphers.
Medicine
- January 5 - The pathologyPathologyPathology is the precise study and diagnosis of disease. The word pathology is from Ancient Greek , pathos, "feeling, suffering"; and , -logia, "the study of". Pathologization, to pathologize, refers to the process of defining a condition or behavior as pathological, e.g. pathological gambling....
of Cushing's syndromeCushing's syndromeCushing's syndrome is a hormone disorder caused by high levels of cortisol in the blood. This can be caused by taking glucocorticoid drugs, or by tumors that produce cortisol or adrenocorticotropic hormone or CRH...
is first described by Harvey CushingHarvey CushingHarvey Williams Cushing, M.D. , was an American neurosurgeon and a pioneer of brain surgery, and the first to describe Cushing's syndrome...
. - Jewish-American gastroenterologistGastroenterologyGastroenterology is the branch of medicine whereby the digestive system and its disorders are studied. The name is a combination of three Ancient Greek words gaster , enteron , and logos...
Burrill Bernard Crohn and colleagues describe a series of patients with "regional ileitis", inflammation of the terminal ileumTerminal ileumThe terminal ileum is the most distal part of the small intestine. It connects to the cecum, the pouch between the small and the large intestine, via the ileocecal valve.-Pathology of the terminal ileum:...
, the area most commonly affected by the condition which will become known as Crohn's diseaseCrohn's diseaseCrohn's disease, also known as regional enteritis, is a type of inflammatory bowel disease that may affect any part of the gastrointestinal tract from mouth to anus, causing a wide variety of symptoms...
. - Commencement of the 40-year Tuskegee syphilis experiment by the U.S. Public Health Service to study the natural progression of untreated syphilisSyphilisSyphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The primary route of transmission is through sexual contact; however, it may also be transmitted from mother to fetus during pregnancy or at birth, resulting in congenital syphilis...
in poor African-American sharecroppers in AlabamaAlabamaAlabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
without their informed consent.
Pharmacology
- Albert Szent-GyörgyiAlbert Szent-GyörgyiAlbert Szent-Györgyi de Nagyrápolt was a Hungarian physiologist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1937. He is credited with discovering vitamin C and the components and reactions of the citric acid cycle...
and Charles Glen KingCharles Glen KingCharles Glen King was an American biochemist who was a pioneer in the field of nutrition research and who isolated vitamin C at the same time as Albert Szent-Györgyi...
identify hexuronic acid as an anti-scorbutic. - December 25 - IG FarbenIG FarbenI.G. Farbenindustrie AG was a German chemical industry conglomerate. Its name is taken from Interessen-Gemeinschaft Farbenindustrie AG . The company was formed in 1925 from a number of major companies that had been working together closely since World War I...
file a patentPatentA patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
application in GermanyGermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
for the medical application of the first sulfonamideSulfonamide (medicine)Sulfonamide or sulphonamide is the basis of several groups of drugs. The original antibacterial sulfonamides are synthetic antimicrobial agents that contain the sulfonamide group. Some sulfonamides are also devoid of antibacterial activity, e.g., the anticonvulsant sultiame...
drug, Sulfonamidochrysoidine (KI-730; which will be marketed as ProntosilProntosilProntosil, the first commercially available antibacterial antibiotic , was developed by a research team at the Bayer Laboratories of the IG Farben conglomerate in Germany...
), following Gerhard DomagkGerhard DomagkGerhard Johannes Paul Domagk was a German pathologist and bacteriologist credited with the discovery of Sulfonamidochrysoidine – the first commercially available antibiotic – for which he received the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.Domagk was born in Lagow, Brandenburg, the...
's laboratory demonstration of its properties as an antibioticAntibioticAn antibacterial is a compound or substance that kills or slows down the growth of bacteria.The term is often used synonymously with the term antibiotic; today, however, with increased knowledge of the causative agents of various infectious diseases, antibiotic has come to denote a broader range of...
.
Physics
- James ChadwickJames ChadwickSir James Chadwick CH FRS was an English Nobel laureate in physics awarded for his discovery of the neutron....
discovers the neutronNeutronThe neutron is a subatomic hadron particle which has the symbol or , no net electric charge and a mass slightly larger than that of a proton. With the exception of hydrogen, nuclei of atoms consist of protons and neutrons, which are therefore collectively referred to as nucleons. The number of...
. Werner HeisenbergWerner HeisenbergWerner Karl Heisenberg was a German theoretical physicist who made foundational contributions to quantum mechanics and is best known for asserting the uncertainty principle of quantum theory...
explains its symmetries by introducing the concept of isospinIsospinIn physics, and specifically, particle physics, isospin is a quantum number related to the strong interaction. This term was derived from isotopic spin, but the term is confusing as two isotopes of a nucleus have different numbers of nucleons; in contrast, rotations of isospin maintain the number...
. - The positronPositronThe positron or antielectron is the antiparticle or the antimatter counterpart of the electron. The positron has an electric charge of +1e, a spin of ½, and has the same mass as an electron...
is observed by Carl AndersonCarl David AndersonCarl David Anderson was an American physicist. He is best known for his discovery of the positron in 1932, an achievement for which he received the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physics, and of the muon in 1936.-Biography:...
. - The Kennedy-Thorndike experimentKennedy-Thorndike experimentThe Kennedy–Thorndike experiment first conducted in 1932, is a modified form of the Michelson–Morley experimental procedure, and tests special relativity....
shows that measured time as well as length are affected by motion, in accordance with the theory of special relativitySpecial relativitySpecial relativity is the physical theory of measurement in an inertial frame of reference proposed in 1905 by Albert Einstein in the paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies".It generalizes Galileo's...
.
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...
- Werner Karl HeisenbergWerner HeisenbergWerner Karl Heisenberg was a German theoretical physicist who made foundational contributions to quantum mechanics and is best known for asserting the uncertainty principle of quantum theory... - 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,...
- Irving LangmuirIrving LangmuirIrving Langmuir was an American chemist and physicist. His most noted publication was the famous 1919 article "The Arrangement of Electrons in Atoms and Molecules" in which, building on Gilbert N. Lewis's cubical atom theory and Walther Kossel's chemical bonding theory, he outlined his... - 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...
- Sir Charles SherringtonCharles Scott SherringtonSir Charles Scott Sherrington, OM, GBE, PRS was an English neurophysiologist, histologist, bacteriologist, and a pathologist, Nobel laureate and president of the Royal Society in the early 1920s...
, Edgar Adrian
- Physics
Births
- January 16 - Dian FosseyDian FosseyDian Fossey was an American zoologist who undertook an extensive study of gorilla groups over a period of 18 years. She studied them daily in the mountain forests of Rwanda, initially encouraged to work there by famous anthropologist Louis Leakey...
(d. 19851985 in scienceThe year 1985 in science and technology involved many significant events, listed below.-Environment:* May 16 – Scientists of the British Antarctic Survey announce discovery of the ozone hole.-Exploration:...
), zoologist. - April 26 - Michael SmithMichael Smith (chemist)Michael Smith, CC, OBC, FRS was a British-born Canadian biochemist who won the 1993 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.-Biography:...
(d. 20002000 in scienceThe year 2000 in science and technology involved some significant events.-Astronomy and space exploration:* May 4 – A rare conjunction occurs on the New Moon including all seven of the traditional celestial bodies known from ancient times up until 1781 with the discovery of Uranus...
), chemistChemistA chemist is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties such as density and acidity. Chemists carefully describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms...
, 1993 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...
winner. - August 15 - Robert Lull Forward (d. 20022002 in scienceThe year 2002 in science and technology involved some significant events.-Astronomy and space exploration:* February 19 - NASA's Mars Odyssey space probe begins to map the surface of Mars using its thermal emission imaging system....
), science fictionScience fictionScience fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
author and physicistPhysicistA physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
. - September 18 - Nikolai RukavishnikovNikolai Rukavishnikov|Nikolai Nikolayevich Rukavishnikov was a Soviet cosmonaut who flew three space missions of the Soyuz programme: Soyuz 10, Soyuz 16, and Soyuz 33...
(d. 20022002 in scienceThe year 2002 in science and technology involved some significant events.-Astronomy and space exploration:* February 19 - NASA's Mars Odyssey space probe begins to map the surface of Mars using its thermal emission imaging system....
), cosmonautAstronautAn 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 13 - John G. ThompsonJohn G. ThompsonJohn Griggs Thompson is a mathematician at the University of Florida noted for his work in the field of finite groups. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1970, the Wolf Prize in 1992 and the 2008 Abel Prize....
, mathematicianMathematicianA mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
.
Deaths
- February 29 - George Claridge DruceGeorge Claridge DruceGeorge Claridge Druce, MA, LLD, JP, FRS, FLS was an English botanist and a Mayor of Oxford.G. Claridge Druce was born at Potterspury on Watling Street in Northamptonshire. He was the illegitimate son of Jane Druce, born 1815 in Buckinghamshire.He went to school in the village of Yardley Gobion....
(b. 18501850 in scienceThe year 1850 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Chemistry:* October 17 - James Young patents a method of distilling paraffin from coal.-Mathematics:* Thomas Kirkman proposes Kirkman's schoolgirl problem.* J. J...
), botanist. - March 14 - George EastmanGeorge EastmanGeorge Eastman was an American innovator and entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and invented roll film, helping to bring photography to the mainstream...
(b. 18541854 in scienceThe year 1854 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Astronomy:* July 22 - Discovery of the asteroid 30 Urania by John Russell Hind....
), photographyPhotographyPhotography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
pioneer. - April 3 - Wilhelm OstwaldWilhelm OstwaldFriedrich Wilhelm Ostwald was a Baltic German chemist. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1909 for his work on catalysis, chemical equilibria and reaction velocities...
(b. 18531853 in scienceThe year 1853 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Biology:* March 17 - Claude Bernard presents his doctoral thesis describing the glycogenetic function of the liver....
), chemistChemistA chemist is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties such as density and acidity. Chemists carefully describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms...
. - April 20 - Giuseppe PeanoGiuseppe PeanoGiuseppe Peano was an Italian mathematician, whose work was of philosophical value. The author of over 200 books and papers, he was a founder of mathematical logic and set theory, to which he contributed much notation. The standard axiomatization of the natural numbers is named the Peano axioms in...
(b. 18581858 in scienceThe year 1858 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Archaeology:* In Luxor, Egypt, the Rhind papyrus is found ; it is sometimes called the Ahmes papyrus for the scribe who wrote it around 1650 BC.-Astronomy:* Donati's Comet, the first comet to be photographed, is...
), ItalianItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
mathematicianMathematicianA mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
. - July 9 - King Camp Gillette (b. 18551855 in scienceThe year 1855 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Events:* Opening of Eidgenössische Polytechnische Schule in Zurich, Switzerland.-Biology:...
), inventor. - September 16 - Sir Ronald RossRonald RossSir Ronald Ross KCB FRS was a British doctor who received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1902 for his work on malaria. He was the first Indian-born person to win a Nobel Prize...
(b. 18571857 in scienceThe year 1857 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Biology:* Rev. M. J. Berkeley publishes Introduction to Cryptogamic Botany.-Chemistry:* Robert Bunsen invents apparatus for measuring effusion....
), physiologist.