1908 in science

The year 1908 in science and technology included many events, some of which are listed below.

Archeaology

• A 40,000-year-old Neandertal boy skeleton is found at Le Moustier in southwest France.

Chemistry

• Heike Kamerlingh Onnes liquefies helium

Physics

• Hans Geiger and Ernest Rutherford invent the Geiger counter

Mathematics

• Ernst Zermelo axiomizes set theory, thus avoiding Cantor's contradictions
• Josip Plemelj solves the Riemann problem about the existence of a differential equation with a given monodromic group and uses Sokhotsky-Plemelj formulae

Technology

• A long-distance radio message is sent from the Eiffel Tower for the first time.
• Henry Ford develops the assembly line method of automobile manufacturing and produces the first Model T automobile.

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Gabriel Lippmann
  • Chemistry – Ernest Rutherford
  • Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine – Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov and Paul Ehrlich

Births

• January 15 – Edward Teller (d. 2003), physicist, inventor of the hydrogen bomb.
• January 22 – Lev Davidovich Landau (d. 1968), Russian physicist.
• February 11 – Vivian Ernest Fuchs (d. 1999), geologist and explorer.
• May 23 – John Bardeen (d. 1991), physicist,co-inventor of the transistor. Only physicist to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics twice.
• September 6 – Louis Essen (d. 1997), physicist, co-developer of the first practical atomic clock

Deaths

• January 3 – Charles Augustus Young (b. 1834), astronomer.
• August 25 – Henri Becquerel (b. 1852), physicist.