1918 in science

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The year 1918 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

• June 8 – Nova Aquila, the brightest observed since 1604, is discovered.
• Kiyotsugu Hirayama identifies several groups of main belt asteroids, now known as Hirayama families.
• Harlow Shapley demonstrates that globular clusters are arranged in a spheroid or halo whose center is not the Earth, but the center of the galaxy.
• Max Wolf discovers the star Wolf 359.
• Heber Curtis discovers a relativistic jet of matter emerging from Elliptical galaxy M87.

Biology

• February 21 – The last known Carolina parakeet (the only parrot species native to the eastern United States) dies in Cincinnati Zoo.
• R. A. Fisher puts forward a genetic model that shows that continuous variation could be the result of Mendelian inheritance in his paper "The Correlation Between Relatives on the Supposition of Mendelian Inheritance".
• J. Henri Fabre's The Sacred Beetle, and others published in English.
• Jacques Loeb's Forced Movements, Tropisms, and Animal Conduct published in the United States.

Cryptography

• February 23 – Arthur Scherbius applies to patent the Enigma machine.
• Edward Hugh Hebern patents the Hebern rotor machine.

History of science

• Technisches Museum Wien opens in Vienna.

Mathematics

• Felix Hausdorff introduces the concept of the fractional Hausdorff dimension.
• Gaston Julia describes the iteration of a rational function.

Physics

• Josef Lense and Hans Thirring find the gravitomagnetic precession of gyroscopes in the equations of general relativity.
• Hans Reissner and Gunnar Nordström solve the Einstein and Maxwell field equations for charged spherically-symmetric non-rotating systems.
• Friedrich Kottler gets Schwarzschild solution without Einstein vacuum field equations.

Physiology and medicine

• January – 1918 flu pandemic: "Spanish 'flu" (influenza) first observed in Haskell County, Kansas.
• March 26 – Dr. Marie Stopes publishes her influential book Married Love in the U.K., following it with Wise Parenthood, a treatise on birth control.
• June–August – "Spanish 'flu" becomes pandemic.
• September 7 – J. B. Christopherson publishes his discovery that antimony potassium tartrate is an effective cure for bilharzia.
• Hartog Jacob Hamburger describes the chloride shift.

Technology

• Edwin Armstrong invents the superheterodyne receiver.
• Theodore von Karman and Asbóth Oszkár build the first co-axial helicopter.
• A. M. Nicolson invents the radio crystal oscillator
• Charles Strite invents the pop-up toaster.

Awards

• Nobel Prize
  • Physics – Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck
  • Chemistry – Fritz Haber
  • Medicine – not awarded

Births

• January 23 – Gertrude B. Elion (died 1999), American pharmacologist, Nobel laureate.
• January 27 – Antonín Mrkos (died 1996), Czech astronomer.
• March 16 – Frederick Reines (died 1998), American physicist, Nobel laureate.
• April 4 – Joseph Ashbrook (died 1980), American astronomer.
• April 25 – Gérard de Vaucouleurs (died 1995), French astronomer.
• May 11 – Richard Feynman (died 1988), American physicist, Nobel laureate.
• June 6 – Edwin G. Krebs (died 2009), American biochemist, Nobel laureate.
• July 15 – Bertram Brockhouse (died 2003), Canadian physicist.
• July 16 – Samuel Victor Perry (died 2009), English biochemist, pioneer in the field of muscle biochemistry.
• August 13 – Frederick Sanger (died 2013), English molecular biologist, double Nobel laureate.
• August 29 – John Herivel (died 2011), British cryptanalyst and science historian.
• September 8 – Derek Barton (died 1998), English-born organic chemist, Nobel laureate.
• September 27 – Martin Ryle (died 1984), English radio astronomer.
• October 4 – Adrian Kantrowitz (died 2008), American cardiac surgeon.
• November 10 – Ernst Otto Fischer (died 2007), German chemist, Nobel laureate.
• November 19 – Hendrik C. van de Hulst (died 2000), Dutch astronomer.
• December 25 – Tamara Mikhaylovna Smirnova (died 2001), Russian astronomer.

Deaths

• January 6 – Georg Cantor (born 1845), German mathematician.
• January 26 – Ewald Hering (born 1834), German physiologist.
• January 31 – Ivan Puluj (born 1845), Austrian-born Ukrainian physicist.
• April 20 – Karl Ferdinand Braun (born 1850), German physicist, Nobel laureate.
• May 1 – G. K. Gilbert (born 1843), American geologist.
• May 31 – Alexander Mitscherlich (born 1836), German chemist.
• June 27 – George Mary Searle (born 1839), American astronomer.
• June 29 – Alfred Senier (born 1853), Irish chemist.
• September 7 – Peter Ludwig Mejdell Sylow (born 1832), Norwegian mathematician.
• October 28 – Ulisse Dini (born 1845), Italian mathematician.
• November 3 – Aleksandr Lyapunov (born 1857), Russian mathematician and physicist.
• November 29 – Thomas Allinson (born 1858), English physician and dietetic reformer.
• December 26 – William Hampton Patton (born 1853), American entomologist.
• December 27 – Birt Acres (born 1854), American-born English pioneer of cinematography.