Overview of the events of 1940 in science
The year 1940 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
January 8
April 1 – Wangari Maathai , née Muta (died 2011 ), Kenyan biologist and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize .
April 18 – Joseph L. Goldstein , American biochemist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine .
May 17 – Alan Kay , American computer scientist and winner of the Turing Award .
June 1 – Kip Thorne , American gravitational physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics .
June 5 – Dickson Despommier , American microbiologist , ecologist and Professor of Public health in Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia University .
June 22 – Daniel Quillen (died 2011), American mathematician .
July 15 – Stephen Jacobsen (died 2016 ), American bioengineer and roboticist .
July 30 – Clive Sinclair (died 2021 ), English inventor.
September 12 – Joachim Frank , German-born biophysicist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry .
September 26 – Louise Johnson (died 2012 ), British biochemist and protein crystallographer .
November 20 – Arieh Warshel , Israeli -born winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry .
November 26 – Enrico Bombieri , Italian-born mathematician.
Judith Pipher , American astrophysicist .
December 24 – Anthony Fauci , American physician-scientist and immunologist.
March 9 – Robert Gunther (born 1869 ), English historian of science.
April 13 – Pierre Marie (born 1853 ), French neurologist .
April 29 – Edgar Buckingham (born 1867 ), American physicist.
June 17 – Arthur Harden (born 1865 ), English biochemist and Nobel laureate in chemistry.
June 21 – John T. Thompson (born 1860 ), American inventor.
July 31 – Louis Charles Christopher Krieger (born 1873 ), American mycologist .
August 30 – J. J. Thomson (born 1856 ), English physicist and Nobel laureate in physics.
November 8 – Arthur Vierendeel (born 1852 ), Belgian civil engineer .
November 17 – Raymond Pearl (born 1879 ), American biologist .
December 16 – Eugène Dubois (born 1858 ), Dutch paleoanthropologist .
December 17 – Alicia Boole Stott (born 1860 ) British mathematician.
^ Drews, Jürgen (March 2000). "Drug Discovery: a Historical Perspective". Science . 287 (5460): 1960–4. Bibcode :2000Sci...287.1960D . doi :10.1126/science.287.5460.1960 . PMID 10720314 . S2CID 1827304 .
^ Robertson, Patrick (1974). The Shell Book of Firsts . London: Ebury Press. p. 124.
^ Waksman, S. A.; Woodruff, H. B. (1940). "Bacteriostatic and bacteriocidal substances produced by soil actinomycetes". Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine . 45 : 609–614. doi :10.3181/00379727-45-11768 . S2CID 84774334 .
^ Kamen, Martin D. (1963). "Early History of Carbon-14: Discovery of this supremely important tracer was expected in the physical sense but not in the chemical sense". Science . 140 (3567): 584–590. Bibcode :1963Sci...140..584K . doi :10.1126/science.140.3567.584 . JSTOR 1710512 . PMID 17737092 .
^ Trossarelli, L. (2010). "the history of nylon" . Club Alpino Italiano, Centro Studi Materiali e Tecniche. Archived from the original on 2012-04-25. Retrieved 2012-02-28 .
^ Corson, D. R.; MacKenzie, K. R.; Segrè, E. (1940). "Artificially Radioactive Element 85". Physical Review . 58 (8): 672–678. Bibcode :1940PhRv...58..672C . doi :10.1103/PhysRev.58.672 .
^ Mcmillan, Edwin; Abelson, Philip Hauge (1940). "Radioactive Element 93" . Physical Review . 57 (12): 1185–6. Bibcode :1940PhRv...57.1185M . doi :10.1103/PhysRev.57.1185.2 .
^ Hammond, George S. (1997). "Physical organic chemistry after 50 years: It has changed, but is it still there?" (PDF) . Pure and Applied Chemistry . 69 (9). IUPAC : 1919–22. doi :10.1351/pac199769091919 . S2CID 53723796 . Retrieved 2014-01-22 .
^ Whitehead, Roger (2004). "Widdowson, Elsie May (1906–2000)" . Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi :10.1093/ref:odnb/74313 . Retrieved 2011-08-10 . (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
^ US patent 2668661 , "Complex Computer", issued 1954-02-09, assigned to American Telephone & Telegraph
^ Smith, Michael (2007). Station X: the Codebreakers of Bletchley Park . Pan Grand Strategy Series (rev. ed.). London: Pan Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-330-41929-1 .
^ Ritchie, David (1986). "George Stibitz and the Bell Computers". The Computer Pioneers . New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 39 . ISBN 067152397X .
^ Metropolis, Nicholas (2014). History of Computing in the Twentieth Century . Elsevier. p. 481. ISBN 9781483296685 .
^ Dalakov, Georgi. "Relay computers of George Stibitz" . History of Computers: Hardware, Software, Internet . Retrieved 2015-03-30 .
^ U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: 1940 in science
^ Siple, Paul (1963). "Obituary: Carl R. Eklund, 1909-1962" (PDF) . Arctic . 16 (2). Arctic Institute of North America: 147–148. doi :10.14430/arctic3531 . Retrieved 2013-01-19 .
^ Levi, F. W. (1942). Finite Geometrical Systems . University of Calcutta. MR 0006834 .
^ Gowing, Margaret (1964). Britain and Atomic Energy, 1935–1945 . London: Macmillan Publishing. pp. 40–43. OCLC 3195209 .
^ Auto Editors of Consumer Guide. "1906-1939 Jeep: Jeep Makes History" . HowStuffWorks . Archived from the original on 2012-05-01. Retrieved 2012-05-31 .