The year 1915 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

• Pluto is photographed for the first time but not recognized as a planet.
• Einstein's new theory of general relativity is used to explain Mercury's strange motions that baffled Urbain Le Verrier.
• Robert Innes discovers Proxima Centauri, the closest star to Earth after the Sun

Earth sciences

• Alfred Wegener proposes the theory of Pangea.

Life sciences

• A global pandemic of Encephalitis lethargica begins.^[1][2][3]
• Walter Bradford Cannon coins the term fight or flight to describe an animal's response to threats.^[4]
• Thomas Hunt Morgan, demonstrates non-inherited genetic mutation (in Drosophila melanogaster), undermining the conceptual basis of eugenics.^[5]
• Clara H. Hasse publishes a paper identifying the cause of citrus canker which leads to the development of methods for controlling the disease, saving the citrus crops in the southern United States from being wiped out.^[6]

Mathematics

• Emmy Noether proves her theorem that any differentiable symmetry of the action of a physical system has a corresponding conservation law.^[7]
• Wac aw Sierpi ski describes the Sierpinski triangle.

Physics

• Albert Einstein publishes his theory of general relativity.
• Arnold Sommerfeld develops a modified Bohr atomic model with elliptic orbits to explain relativistic fine structure.

Technology

• February 4 - John G. A. Kitchen patents the reversing rudder.^[8]
• September 9 - William Foster & Co. of Lincoln in England complete the first prototype military tank "Little Willie".
• Georges Claude patents the neon discharge tube for use in advertising.
• The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the predecessor of NASA, is founded in the United States.

Awards

• Nobel Prize
  • Physics - Sir William Henry Bragg and Sir William Lawrence Bragg
  • Chemistry - Richard Martin Willst tter
  • Medicine - not awarded

Births

• March 15 - Laurent Schwartz (died 2002), mathematician.
• March 16 - Kunihiko Kodaira (died 1997), mathematician.
• June 24 - Fred Hoyle (died 2001), astronomer and science fiction writer.
• November 30 - Henry Taube (died 2005), Nobelaureate in Chemistry (1983).

Deaths

• April 19 - Sir Thomas Clouston (born 1840), Scottish psychiatrist.
• May 13 - Morgan Crofton (born 1826), U.K. mathematician.
• July 22 - Sir Sandford Fleming (born 1827), Canadian engineer and surveyor known as the "father of time zones".
• August 10 - Henry Moseley (born 1887), English physicist (killed in action on the Gallipoli Campaign).
• October 11 - Jean Henri Fabre (born 1823), French entomologist.
• October 15 - Theodor Boveri (born 1862), German geneticist.
• December 19 - Alois Alzheimer (born 1864), German neuroscientist.

References

fr:1915 en science he:1915 mk:1915 no:Vitenskaps ret 1915 nn:Vitskap i 1915 pl:1915 w nauce pt:1915 na ci ncia ru:1915 sk:1915 vo vede sv:Vetenskaps ret 1915