1925 in science
Encyclopedia
The year 1925 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.
Biology
- July 21 - Scopes TrialScopes TrialThe Scopes Trial—formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes and informally known as the Scopes Monkey Trial—was a landmark American legal case in 1925 in which high school science teacher, John Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act which made it unlawful to...
: In Dayton, TennesseeDayton, TennesseeDayton is a city in Rhea County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 6,180 at the 2000 census. The Dayton, TN, Urban Cluster, which includes developed areas adjacent to the city and extends south to Graysville, Tennessee, had 9,050 people in 2000...
, high school biology teacher John T. ScopesJohn T. ScopesJohn Thomas Scopes , was a biology teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, who was charged on May 5, 1925 for violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution in Tennessee schools...
is found guilty of teaching 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...
in class and fined $100.
Chemistry
- May - RheniumRheniumRhenium is a chemical element with the symbol Re and atomic number 75. It is a silvery-white, heavy, third-row transition metal in group 7 of the periodic table. With an average concentration of 1 part per billion , rhenium is one of the rarest elements in the Earth's crust. The free element has...
is discovered by Walter NoddackWalter NoddackWalter Noddack was a German chemist. He, Ida Tacke , and Otto Berg reported the discovery of element 43 and element 75 in 1925.-Rhenium:...
and Ida Tacke in BerlinBerlinBerlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, the last stable, non-radioactive naturally-occurring elementChemical elementA chemical element is a pure chemical substance consisting of one type of atom distinguished by its atomic number, which is the number of protons in its nucleus. Familiar examples of elements include carbon, oxygen, aluminum, iron, copper, gold, mercury, and lead.As of November 2011, 118 elements...
to be found.
History of science
- Museum of the History of Science opens in the Old AshmoleanAshmolean MuseumThe Ashmolean Museum on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is the world's first university museum...
building in OxfordOxfordThe city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
, set up by Robert GuntherRobert GuntherRobert Theodore Gunther was a historian of science, zoologist, and founder of the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford....
based largely on the collection given by Dr Lewis EvansLewis Evans (collector)Lewis Evans was an English businessman and scientific instrument collector.Lewis Evans was the son of Sir John Evans, an archaeologist, and younger brother of the more famous archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans who excavated Knossos in Crete. He studied chemistry at University College London and...
.
Physics
- January - Wolfgang PauliWolfgang PauliWolfgang Ernst Pauli was an Austrian theoretical physicist and one of the pioneers of quantum physics. In 1945, after being nominated by Albert Einstein, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his "decisive contribution through his discovery of a new law of Nature, the exclusion principle or...
announces his exclusion principlePauli exclusion principleThe Pauli exclusion principle is the quantum mechanical principle that no two identical fermions may occupy the same quantum state simultaneously. A more rigorous statement is that the total wave function for two identical fermions is anti-symmetric with respect to exchange of the particles...
.
Technology
- June 13 - Charles Francis JenkinsCharles Francis JenkinsCharles Francis Jenkins was an American pioneer of early cinema and one of the inventors of television, though he used mechanical rather than electronic technologies...
achieves the first synchronized transmission of pictures and sound, using 48 lines, and a mechanical system. A 10-minute film of a miniature windmill in motion is sent across 5 miles from AnacostiaAnacostiaAnacostia is a historic neighborhood in Washington, D.C. Its historic downtown is located at the intersection of Good Hope Road and Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue It is the most famous neighborhood in the Southeast quadrant of Washington, located east of the Anacostia River, after which the...
to Washington, DC. The images are viewed by representatives of the Bureau of Standards, the U.S. Navy, the Department of CommerceUnited States Department of CommerceThe United States Department of Commerce is the Cabinet department of the United States government concerned with promoting economic growth. It was originally created as the United States Department of Commerce and Labor on February 14, 1903...
and others. Jenkins calls this "the first public demonstration of radiovision".
Other events
- Sinclair LewisSinclair LewisHarry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...
's novel ArrowsmithArrowsmith (novel)Arrowsmith is a novel by American author and playwright Sinclair Lewis that was published in 1925. It won the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for Lewis but he refused to accept it. Lewis was greatly assisted in its preparation by science writer Dr. Paul de Kruif, who received 25% of the royalties on sales, but...
is published in the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, notable in having the culture of medical science as a principal theme.
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...
- James FranckJames FranckJames Franck was a German Jewish physicist and Nobel laureate.-Biography:Franck was born to Jacob Franck and Rebecca Nachum Drucker. Franck completed his Ph.D...
, Gustav Ludwig HertzGustav Ludwig HertzGustav Ludwig Hertz was a German experimental physicist and Nobel Prize winner, and a nephew of Heinrich Rudolf Hertz.-Biography:... - 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,...
- Richard Adolf ZsigmondyRichard Adolf ZsigmondyRichard Adolf Zsigmondy was an Austrian-Hungarian chemist and Nobel laureate for chemistry known for his research in colloids. The crater Zsigmondy on the Moon is named in his honour....
- Physics
Births
- January 7 - Gerald DurrellGerald DurrellGerald "Gerry" Malcolm Durrell, OBE was a naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist, author and television presenter...
(d. 19951995 in scienceThe year 1995 in science and technology involved many significant events, listed below.-Archaeology:* January 18 - In southern France near Vallon-Pont-d'Arc a network of caves are discovered that contain paintings and engravings that are 17,000 to 20,000 years old.* Wes Linster discovers the first...
), wildlife conservationWildlife conservationWildlife conservation is the preservation, protection, or restoration of wildlife and their environment, especially in relation to endangered and vulnerable species. All living non-domesticated animals, even if bred, hatched or born in captivity, are considered wild animals. Wildlife represents all...
ist (born in British India). - August 10 - Stanislav BreberaStanislav BreberaStanislav Brebera is a Czech chemist.Brebera spent his career in Czechoslovakian state-hold Research Institute for Chemical Industry, currently Explosia Pardubice. In 1966 he developed plastic explosive Semtex....
, Czech 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...
. - October 13 - Margaret RobertsMargaret ThatcherMargaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...
, chemist and Prime Minister of the United KingdomPrime Minister of the United KingdomThe Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...
. - October 31 - John PopleJohn PopleSir John Anthony Pople, KBE, FRS, was a Nobel-Prize winning theoretical chemist. Born in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset, England, he attended Bristol Grammar School. He won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge in 1943. He received his B. A. in 1946. Between 1945 and 1947 he worked at the Bristol...
(d. 20042004 in scienceThe year 2004 in science and technology involved some significant events.-Anthropology:*October 27 - Remains of a previously unknown species of human is discovered in Indonesia...
), BritishBritish peopleThe British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...
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...
-winning chemist.
Deaths
- February 3 - Oliver HeavisideOliver HeavisideOliver Heaviside was a self-taught English electrical engineer, mathematician, and physicist who adapted complex numbers to the study of electrical circuits, invented mathematical techniques to the solution of differential equations , reformulated Maxwell's field equations in terms of electric and...
(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...
), 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...
. - February 22 - Thomas Clifford Allbutt (b. 18361836 in scienceThe year 1836 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Astronomy:* May 15 - Francis Baily, during an eclipse of the sun, observes the phenomenon named after him as Baily's beads.-Biology:...
), physicianPhysicianA physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
. - June 3 - Camille FlammarionCamille FlammarionNicolas Camille Flammarion was a French astronomer and author. He was a prolific author of more than fifty titles, including popular science works about astronomy, several notable early science fiction novels, and several works about Spiritism and related topics. He also published the magazine...
(b. 18421842 in scienceThe year 1842 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Exploration:* Antarctic explorer James Clark Ross charts the eastern side of James Ross Island and on January 23 reaches a Farthest South of 78°09'30"S.-Medicine:...
), astronomerAstronomerAn astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as planets, stars and galaxies.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using...
. - June 22 - Felix KleinFelix KleinChristian Felix Klein was a German mathematician, known for his work in group theory, function theory, non-Euclidean geometry, and on the connections between geometry and group theory...
(b. 18491849 in scienceThe year 1849 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Astronomy:* Édouard Roche finds the limiting radius of tidal destruction and tidal creation for a body held together only by its self gravity, called the Roche limit, and uses it to explain why Saturn's rings do...
), GermanGermanyGermany , 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...
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 26 - Gottlob FregeGottlob FregeFriedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege was a German mathematician, logician and philosopher. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern logic, and made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics. He is generally considered to be the father of analytic philosophy, for his writings on...
(b. 18481848 in scienceThe year 1848 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Events:* September 20 - The American Association for the Advancement of Science is set up in Pennsylvania by re-formation of the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists, with William Charles Redfield...
), mathematicianMathematicianA mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
.