1903 in science

The year 1903 in science and technology included many events, some of which are listed below.

Aeronautics

• First documented, successful, controlled, powered flight of an aircraft with a petrol engine by Orville Wright
• Konstantin Tsiolkovsky begins a series of papers discussing the use of rocketry to reach outer space, space suits, and colonization of the solar system

Biology

• The type specimen of the vampire squid (Vampyroteuthis infernalis) is described by Carl Chun.

Chemistry

• Peter Cooper Hewitt demonstrates the mercury-vapour lamp

Mathematics

• Fast Fourier Transform algorithm presented by Carle David Tolme Runge
• Edmund Georg Hermann Landau gives considerably simpler proof of the prime number theorem

Physics

• George Darwin and John Joly claim that radioactivity is partially responsible for the Earth's heat

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Antoine Henri Becquerel, Pierre Curie, and Maria Skłodowska-Curie
  • Chemistry – Svante August Arrhenius
  • Medicine – Niels Ryberg Finsen

Births

• January 22 – Fritz Houtermans (d. 1966), physicist.
• January 27 – John Carew Eccles (d. 1997), psychologist.
• February 2 – Bartel Leendert van der Waerden (d. 1996), mathematician.
• February 22 – Frank P. Ramsey (d. 1930), mathematician.
• April 6 – Doc Edgerton, (d. 1990), professor electrical engineer.
• April 25 – Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov (d. 1987), mathematician.
• May 2 – Benjamin Spock (d. 1998), pediatrician, writer.
• August 7 – Louis Leakey (d. 1972), British archaeologist.
• October 5 – M. King Hubbert (d. 1989), geophysicist.
• November 7 – Konrad Lorenz (d. 1989), zoologist.
• November 27 – Lars Onsager (d. 1976), chemist.
• December 28 – John von Neumann (d. 1957), mathematician.

Deaths

• February 1 – George Gabriel Stokes (b. 1819), mathematician and physicist
• March 28 – Emile Baudot (b. 1845), telegraph engineer
• April 28 – Willard Gibbs (b. 1839), physical chemist