The year 1934 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

• Richard Tolman shows that black-body radiation in an expanding universe cools but remains thermal.
• Georges Lema tre interprets the cosmological constant as due to a vacuum energy with an unusual perfect fluid equation of state.

Chemistry

• The Mulliken scale of chemical element electronegativity is developed by Robert S. Mulliken.
• Norman Haworth and Edmund Hirst report the first synthesis of vitamin C.^[1]
• J. D. Bernal and Dorothy Crowfoot first successfully apply the technique of X-ray crystallography to analysis of a biological substance, pepsin.^[2]

History of science

• Lewis Mumford publishes Technics and Civilization.
• The Iron Bridge in Shropshire, dating from the Industrial Revolution period, becomes an officially scheduled monument in England.

Physics

• Sonoluminescence is discovered at the University of Cologne.

Physiology and medicine

• Outbreak of "atypical poliomyelitis", strongly resembling what would later be called chronic fatigue syndrome, affects a large number of medical staff at the Los Angeles County Hospital.^[3]
• George de Hevesy uses heavy water in one of the first biological tracer experiments, to estimate the rate of turnover of water in the human body.^[4]

Technology

• April 3 - Percy Shaw patents the cat's eye road-safety device in Britain.^[5]
• April 18 - Citro n Traction Avant introduced, the world's first front-wheel drive monocoque (welded steel unit body) production automobile, designed by Andr Lef bvre and Flaminio Bertoni.
• The 135 film cartridge is introduced in Germany and the United States with the Kodak Retina camera, making 35mm film easy to use.
• The first commercially electronic television sets with cathode ray tubes are manufactured by Telefunken in Germany.

Publications

• Samuel C. Bradford proposes Bradford's law of scattering, an example of Pareto distribution applicable in the bibliometrics of scientific literature and beyond.^[6]
• Karl Popper publishes Logik der Forschung.

Awards

• Nobel Prize
  • Physics: not awarded
  • Chemistry: Harold Clayton Urey
  • Physiology or Medicine: George Hoyt Whipple, George Richards Minot, William Parry Murphy

Births

• March 5 - Daniel Kahneman, psychologist, winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
• March 9 - Yuri Gagarin (died 1968), cosmonaut, the first man in space.
• March 31 - Carlo Rubbia, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
• April 3 - Jane Goodall, primatologist.
• May 23 - Robert Moog (died 2005), pioneer of electronic music.
• November 9 - Carl Sagan (died 1996), astronomer.

Deaths

• January 29 - Fritz Haber (born 1868), chemist.
• July 4 - Marie Curie (born 1867), physicist.
• October 17 - Santiago Ram n y Cajal (born 1852), winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• November 16 - Carl von Linde (born 1842), refrigeration engineer.
• November 20 - Willem de Sitter (born 1872), mathematician, physicist and astronomer.

References

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