George Wells Beadle and Edward Lawrie Tatum publish "Genetic Control of Biochemical Reactions in Neurospora" which shows that specific genes code for specific proteins.[1]
May 12 – German engineer Konrad Zuse presents the Z3, the world's first working programmable, Turing complete, fully automatic computer, to an audience of aviation engineers in Berlin.
February 12 – Reserve Constable Albert Alexander, a sepsis patient at the Radcliffe Infirmary in Oxford, becomes the first person treated with penicillin intravenously, by Howard Florey's team, injected by Dr Charles Fletcher. He reacts positively but there is insufficient supply of the drug to reverse his terminal infection. A successful treatment is achieved during May.[4]
^Mitchell, H. K.; Snell, E. E.; Williams, R. J. (1941). "The concentration of "folic acid"". Journal of the American Chemical Society. 63 (8): 2284. doi:10.1021/ja01853a512.
^Robertson, Patrick (1974). The Shell Book of Firsts. London: Ebury Press. pp. 124–5.
^Knobloch, Eberhard (2003). The shoulders on which we stand/Wegbereiter der Wissenschaft (in German and English). Springer. pp. 170–173. ISBN 3-540-20557-8.
^Taylor, Geoffrey (1950). "The formation of a blast wave by a very intense explosion". Proceedings of the Royal Society. A201. London: 159 ff. JSTOR98395. The report was classified when written.
^Hewlett, Richard G.; Anderson, Oscar E. (1962). The New World, 1939–1946. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. pp. 40–41. ISBN 0-520-07186-7. OCLC637004643.