1934 in science

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The year 1934 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

• Richard Tolman shows that black-body radiation in an expanding universe cools but remains thermal.
• Georges Lemaître interprets the cosmological constant as due to a vacuum energy with an unusual perfect fluid equation of state.

Chemistry

• The Mulliken scale of chemical element electronegativity is developed by Robert S. Mulliken.
• Norman Haworth and Edmund Hirst report the first synthesis of vitamin C.
• J. D. Bernal and Dorothy Crowfoot first successfully apply the technique of X-ray crystallography to analysis of a biological substance, pepsin.
• The first commercial heavy water plant is built at Vemork in Norway; production also starts this year at Dnepropetrovsk in the Soviet Union.

History of science

• Lewis Mumford publishes Technics and Civilization.
• The Iron Bridge in Shropshire, dating from the Industrial Revolution period, becomes an officially scheduled monument in England.

Physics

• Sonoluminescence is discovered at the University of Cologne.
• Gregory Breit and John A. Wheeler describe the Breit–Wheeler process.

Physiology and medicine

• March 8 – Sodium thiopental, the first intravenous anesthetic, synthesized by Ernest H. Volwiler with Donalee L. Tabern of Abbott Laboratories, is first administered to human subjects.
• Outbreak of "atypical poliomyelitis", strongly resembling what would later be called chronic fatigue syndrome, affects a large number of medical staff at the Los Angeles County Hospital.
• George de Hevesy uses heavy water in one of the first biological tracer experiments, to estimate the rate of turnover of water in the human body.
• Tudor Thomas' work on corneal grafting restores the sight of a man who had been nearly blind for 27 years.

Technology

• April 3 – Percy Shaw patents the cat's eye road-safety device in Britain.
• April 18 – Citroën Traction Avant introduced, the world's first front-wheel drive monocoque (welded steel unit body) production automobile, designed by André Lefèbvre and Flaminio Bertoni.
• April 24 – Laurens Hammond patents the Hammond organ in the United States.
• The 135 film cartridge is introduced in Germany and the United States with the Kodak Retina camera, making 35mm film easy to use.
• The first commercial electronic television sets with cathode ray tubes are manufactured by Telefunken in Germany.

Publications

• Samuel C. Bradford proposes Bradford's law of scattering, an example of Pareto distribution applicable in the bibliometrics of scientific literature and beyond.
• Karl Popper publishes Logik der Forschung.

Awards

• Nobel Prize
  • Physics: not awarded
  • Chemistry: Harold Clayton Urey
  • Physiology or Medicine: George Hoyt Whipple, George Richards Minot, William Parry Murphy

Births

• March 5 – Daniel Kahneman, psychologist, Israeli-American winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
• March 9 – Yuri Gagarin (died 1968), Russian cosmonaut, the first man in space.
• March 31 – Carlo Rubbia, Italian winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
• April 3 – Jane Goodall, English primatologist.
• May 23 – Robert Moog (died 2005), American pioneer of electronic music.
• November 9 – Carl Sagan (died 1996), American astronomer.
• Willie Hobbs Moore (died 1994), African American engineer.

Deaths

• January 29 – Fritz Haber (born 1868), German chemist.
• April 21 – Carsten Borchgrevink (born 1864), Norwegian Antarctic explorer.
• July 4 – Marie Curie (born 1867), Polish-born French physicist.
• October 17 – Santiago Ramón y Cajal (born 1852), Spanish winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• September 27 – Ellen Willmott (born 1858), English horticulturist.
• November 16 – Carl von Linde (born 1842), German refrigeration engineer.
• November 20 – Willem de Sitter (born 1872), Dutch mathematician, physicist and astronomer.