The year 1933 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Astronomy April – American radio engineer Karl Jansky of Bell Labs announces his discovery of a source of radio waves at the centre of Sagittarius (constellation), opening the field of radio astronomy. October 13 – The British Interplanetary Society is founded. Walter Baade and Fritz Zwicky invent the concept of the neutron star, a new type of celestial object, suggesting that supernovae might be created by the collapse of a normal star to form a neutron star. Sir Arthur Eddington publishes The Expanding Universe: Astronomy's 'Great Debate', 1900–1931 in Cambridge. Comedian Will Hay observes the periodic Great White Spot on Saturn from his private observatory in London. Fritz Zwicky postulates the existence of dark matter.
Chemistry Gilbert N. Lewis isolates the first sample of pure heavy water by electrolysis. Morris S. Kharasch and Frank R. Mayo propose that free radicals are responsible for anti-Markovnikov addition of hydrogen bromide to allyl bromide.
Earth sciences March 10 – Long Beach earthquake in Southern California: First recording of earthquake strong ground motions by an accelerograph network, installed in 1932 by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey.
Mathematics Andrey Kolmogorov publishes Foundations of the Theory of Probability, laying the modern axiomatic foundations of probability theory. David Champernowne, while still a Cambridge undergraduate, publishes his work on the Champernowne constant in real numbers.. Alfréd Haar introduces Haar measure. Jerzy Neyman and Egon Pearson publish the Neyman–Pearson lemma. Stanley Skewes discovers Skewes' number.
Pharmacology Late – Amphetamine is first presented as a pharmaceutical product when Smith, Kline and French in the United States begin selling it as an inhaler under the brand name Benzedrine as a decongestant.
Physics September 12 – Leó Szilárd, waiting for a red light on Southampton Row in Bloomsbury (London), conceives the idea of the nuclear chain reaction. November 28 – Robert J. Van de Graaff conducts the first public demonstration of the Round Hill generator
Physiology and medicine April 3 – First attempted human kidney transplant, by Dr Yuri Voronoy in the Soviet city of Kherson; the recipient dies 2 days later due to incompatibility of blood type with the (cadaveric) donor. July 8 – English researchers Wilson Smith, Christopher Andrewes and Patrick Laidlaw report isolating a human influenza A virus and its transferability to ferrets. July 14 – Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring enacted in Nazi GermanyComing into force January 1934. allowing compulsory sterilization of citizens suffering from a list of alleged genetic disorders. Manfred Sakel begins to practice insulin shock therapy on psychiatric patients in Vienna.
Technology March 7 – The hydraulic torque converter is patented by Alf Lysholm. June – A research group at RCA headed by Vladimir K. Zworykin publicly launches the iconoscope, the first practical cathode-ray tube television camera. June 26 – American Totalisator unveils its first tote board, the electronic pari-mutuel betting machine, at the Arlington Park race track near Chicago.
Organizations Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago) first opens to the public, as part of the Century of Progress Exposition. The Institute for Advanced Study opens at Princeton, New Jersey, attracting Albert Einstein, John von Neumann and Kurt Gödel. Sheffield Trades Historical Society (later South Yorkshire Industrial History Society) established in England.
Awards Nobel Prizes Physics – Erwin Schrödinger and Paul Dirac Chemistry – not awarded Physiology or Medicine – Thomas Hunt Morgan
Births January 6 – Oleg Makarov (died 2003), Soviet cosmonaut. January 18 – David Bellamy (died 2019), English botanist. March 9 – Sir David Weatherall (died 2018), English molecular geneticist. March 10 – Patricia Bergquist (died 2009), New Zealand scientist specializing in anatomy and taxonomy. March 23 – Philip Zimbardo, American social psychologist. April 1 – Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, French physicist and Nobel laureate April 14 – Yuri Oganessian, Russian nuclear physicist. April 26 – Arno Allan Penzias (died 2024), German-born American physicist and radio astronomer. May 22 – Chen Jingrun (died 1996), Chinese mathematician. July 9 – Oliver Sacks (died 2015), English-born neurologist. July 12 – Max Birnstiel (died 2014), Swiss molecular biologist. July 15 – John Hopfield, American neuroscientist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics. August 10 – Ed Posner (died 1993), American mathematician. August 15 Stanley Milgram (died 1984), American social psychologist. Michael Rutter (died 2021) English child psychiatrist. September 6 – Juliet Clutton-Brock (died 2015), English zooarchaeologist. September 10 – Yevgeny Khrunov (died 2000), Soviet cosmonaut. September 26 – Charles C. Conley (died 1984), American mathematician specializing in dynamical systems. October 2 – Sir John Gurdon (died 2025), English developmental biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. October 9 – Sir Peter Mansfield (died 2017), English physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. November 1 – Dijen K. Ray-Chaudhuri, Bengali-born mathematician. November 4 – Sir Charles K. Kao (died 2018), Chinese electrical engineer and physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics. November 14 – Akira Endo (died 2024), Japanese biochemist. December 22 – Thomas Stockham (died 2004), American electrical engineer and inventor December 23 – Akihito, ichthyologist and Emperor of Japan.
Deaths January 14 – Sir Robert Jones, 1st Baronet (born 1857), Welsh orthopaedic surgeon. May 22 – Sándor Ferenczi (born 1873), Hungarian psychoanalyst. June 14 – Ernest William Moir (born 1862), British civil engineer. September 25 – Paul Ehrenfest (born 1880), Austrian physicist and mathematician. October 29 Albert Calmette (born 1863), French physician, bacteriologist and immunologist. Paul Painlevé (born 1863), mathematician and statesman, 62nd Prime Minister of France. November 3 – Pierre Paul Émile Roux (born 1853), French physician, bacteriologist and immunologist. December 8 – John Joly (born 1857), Irish physicist.
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