1902 in science

The year 1902 in science and technology included many events, some of which are listed below.

Aeronautics

• Lyman Gilmore reportedly becomes the first person to fly a powered airplane (a steam-powered glider).

Archaeology

• Spyridon Stais finds the Antikythera mechanism

Chemistry

• August Verneuil develops a process for making synthetic rubies.

Photography

• Arthur Korn devises practical phototelegraphy technology (reduction of photographic images to data bits which can transmitted by wire to other locations)

Physics

• James Jeans finds the length scale required for gravitational perturbations to grow in a static nearly homogeneous medium
• Philipp Lenard observes that maximum photoelectron energies are independent of illuminating intensity but depend on frequency
• Theodor Svedberg suggests that fluctuations in molecular bombardment cause the Brownian motion

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Hendrik Lorentz, Pieter Zeeman
  • Chemistry – Hermann Emil Fischer
  • Medicine – Ronald Ross

Births

• February 10 – Walter Houser Brattain (d. 1987), physicist.
• August 8 – Paul Dirac (d. 1984), physicist.
• Zhang Yuzhe (d. 1986), Chinese astronomer.

Deaths

• April 12 – Alfred Cornu (b. 1841), physicist.
• September 5 – Rudolf Virchow (b. 1821), pathologist and biologist.
• December 22 – Richard von Krafft-Ebing (b. 1840), sexologist.