1901 in science in Encyclopedia

1901 in science

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1901 in science

The year 1901 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Okapi, a relative of the Giraffe found in the rainforests around the Congo River in north east Zaire, is discovered (previously known only to local natives).

December 13 (20:45:52) - Retrospectively, this becomes the earliest date representable with a signed 32-bit integer on digital computer systems that reference time in seconds since the Unix epoch.

September 25 - Establishment of Deutsche Gesellschaft f r Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften, the world's first history of science society.^[1]

May/June - Russell's paradox: Bertrand Russell shows that Georg Cantor's naive set theory leads to a contradiction.^[2]
lie Cartan develops the exterior derivative.
Leonard Eugene Dickson publishes Linear groups with an exposition of the Galois field theory in Leipzig, advancing the classification of finite simple groups and listing almost all non-abelian simple groups having order less than one billion.^[3]
Aleksandr Lyapunov proves the central limit theorem rigorously using characteristic functions.^[4]

Publication begins of A Monograph of British Graptolites by Gertrude L. Elles and Dr Ethel M. R. Wood, edited by Charles Lapworth.

Albert Einstein publishes his conclusions on capillarity.^[5]
Owen Richardson describes the phenomenon in thermionic emission which gives rise to Richardson's Law.^[6]
Ivan Yarkovsky describes the Yarkovsky effect, a thermal force acting on rotating bodies in space, in a pamphlet on "The density of light ether and the resistance it offers to motion" published in Bryansk.^[7]
December 12 - Guglielmo Marconi receives the first trans-Atlantic radio signal, sent from Poldhu in Cornwall, England, to Newfoundland, the letter "S" in Morse.^[8]

November 25 - Auguste Deter is first examined by Dr Alois Alzheimer in Frankfort leading to a diagnosis of the condition that will carry his name.^[9]
Epinephrine is rediscovered by Jokichi Takamine, who names it adrenaline.
Ivan Pavlov develops the theory of the "conditional reflex".^[10]
Georg Kelling of Dresden performs the first "coelioscopy" (laparoscopic surgery), on a dog.^[11]
William C. Gorgas controls the spread of yellow fever in Cuba by a mosquito eradication program.^[12]
An improved sphygmomanometer, for the measurement of blood pressure, is invented and popularized by Harvey Cushing.
Karl Landsteiner discovers the existence of different human blood types

August 30 - Hubert Cecil Booth patents the electrically powered vacuum cleaner in the U.K.^[13]
November 30 - Frank Hornby of Liverpool is granted a U.K. patent for the construction toy that will become Meccano.^[14]
December 3 - King C. Gillette files a U.S. patent application for his design of safety razor utilizing thin, disposable blades of stamped steel.^[15]
Ernest Godward invents the spiral hairpin in New Zealand.
Theodore Rall patents his design of rolling lift bridge.^[16]

H. G. Wells' "scientific romance" The First Men in the Moon and his collected articles on futurology Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress Upon Human Life and Thought.