1944 in science

The year 1944 in science and technology included many events:

Astronomy

• Hendrik van de Hulst predicts the 21 cm hyperfine line of neutral interstellar hydrogen.

Biology

• Oswald Avery published Studies on the chemical nature of the substance inducing transformation of Pneumococcal types (Avery, O.T., MacLeod, C.M. & McCarty, M. Journal of Experimental Mededicine February 1 issue.) The McCarty laboratory showed that a DNA molecule could carry an inheritable trait to a living organism. This was important because many biologists thought that genes were proteins and that nucleic acids were too simple chemically to serve as genetic storage molecules.

Chemistry

• Americium discovered by Glenn T. Seaborg, et al.
• Lars Onsager publishes the exact solution to the two-dimensional Ising model

Computer science

• August 7 – IBM dedicates the first program-controlled calculator, the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, best known as the Harvard Mark I.

Medicine

• The antibiotic streptomycin is developed.

Technology

• December 9 – First flight of the Heinkel He 162 Volksjäger, the second jet engined fighter aircraft to be fielded by the Luftwaffe in WWII.
• Erik Wallenberg and Ruben Rausing invent a way to package milk in paper and start the company Tetra Pak.
• First operational use of a snorkel on a submarine.
• First operational use of the V-2 rocket, the first ballistic missile.

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Isidor Isaac Rabi
  • Chemistry – Otto Hahn
  • Medicine – Joseph Erlanger, Herbert Spencer Gasser

Births

• August 24 – Gregory Jarvis (d. 1986), astronaut.

Deaths

• November 2 – Thomas Midgley (b. 1889), American chemist and inventor.
• November 22 – Arthur Eddington (b. 1882), astrophysicist.