1936 in science

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The year 1936 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Chemistry

• February 4 – Radium E. becomes the first radioactive element to be made synthetically.
• December 23 – The first nerve agent, Tabun, is discovered (accidentally) by a research team headed by Dr Gerhard Schrader of IG Farben in Germany.

Computer science

• May 28 – Alan Turing submits "On Computable Numbers" to the London Mathematical Society for publication, introducing the concept of the theoretical "a[utomatic]-machine" or Turing machine. Its formal publication is on November 12.

Earth sciences

• Inge Lehmann argues that the Earth's molten interior has a solid inner core.

Mathematics

• Dutch mathematician Cornelis Simon Meijer introduces the Meijer G-function.

Medicine

• António Egas Moniz publishes his first report of performing a prefrontal leukotomy on a human patient.
• Guido Fanconi describes a connection between celiac disease, cystic fibrosis of the pancreas and bronchiectasis.

Psychology

• Sherif's experiment on conformity.

Technology

• June 26 – Focke-Wulf Fw 61, the first fully controllable helicopter, makes its first flight.
• November 2 – The world's first regular daily high-definition (at this time defined as at least 200 lines) television broadcast service is begun by the British Broadcasting Corporation from Alexandra Palace in London (following test transmissions since August). The service initially alternates on a weekly basis between John Logie Baird's 240-line electromechanical system and the Marconi-EMI all-electronic 405-line television system.

Zoology

• September 7 – Death of the last recorded thylacine, in Hobart Zoo.
• American explorer Ruth Harkness brings the first live giant panda, a cub named Su Lin, out of China.

Awards

• Fields Prize in Mathematics (first award): Lars Ahlfors and Jesse Douglas
• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics – Victor Franz Hess, Carl David Anderson
  • Chemistry – Peter Debye
  • Medicine – Sir Henry Hallett Dale, Otto Loewi

Births

• January 10 – Robert Wilson, American physicist and radio astronomer.
• March 24 – David Suzuki, Canadian geneticist and populariser of science.
• April 17 – Meemann Chang, Chinese paleontologist.
• August 1 – W. D. Hamilton (died 2000), English evolutionary biologist, widely recognised as one of the greatest evolutionary theorists of the 20th century.
• September 17 – Gerald Guralnik (died 2014), American physicist most famous for his co-discovery of the Higgs mechanism and Higgs boson.
• December 22 – James Burke, British historian and populariser of science.

Deaths

• February 27 – Ivan Pavlov (born 1849), Russian physiologist.
• April 8 – Róbert Bárány (born 1876), Austro-Hungarian-born otologist, Nobel Prize winner in medicine.
• April 27 – Karl Pearson (born 1857), English mathematician.
• August 25 – Maria von Linden (born 1869), German bacteriologist and zoologist.