1909 in science

The year 1909 in science and technology included many events, some of which are listed below.

Archaeology

• Discovery of the Burgess Shale Cambrian fossil site

Astronomy

• Comet Halley first becomes visible on a photographic plate.

Geology

• Ernest Shackleton's expedition finds the magnetic South Pole.

Physics

• Albert Einstein together with Marcel Grossmann starts to develop a theory which would bind metric tensor g_ik, which defines a space geometry, with a source of gravity, that is with mass
• Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden discover large angle deflections of alpha particles by thin metal foils
• Ernest Rutherford and Thomas Royds demonstrate that alpha particles are doubly ionized helium atoms

Medicine

• Karl Landsteiner develops system of blood groups.

Technology

• Leo Baekeland presents the Bakelite hard thermosetting plastic
• Einar Dessau uses a short-wave radio transmitter becoming the first radio broadcaster.
• Louis Bleriot is the first man to fly across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air craft.

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics - Guglielmo Marconi, Karl Ferdinand Braun
  • Chemistry - Wilhelm Ostwald
  • Medicine - Emil Theodor Kocher

Births

• January 5 - Stephen Cole Kleene (d. 1994), mathematician.
• April 13 - Stanislaw Marcin Ulam (d. 1984), mathematician.
• May 7 - Edwin H. Land (d. 1991), inventor and founder of Polaroid.
• November 24 - Gerhard Gentzen (d. 1945), mathematician.
• Giulio Racah (d. 1965), Israeli mathematician and physicist.

Deaths

• January 12 - Hermann Minkowski (b. 1864), mathematician.
• July 11 - Simon Newcomb (b. 1835), astronomer.
• August 27 - Emil Christian Hansen (b. 1842), fermentation physiologist.

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