Science & Technology
In the year 1930
Anthropology
Margaret Mead's Growing up in New Guinea tells of her research among primitive tribes in New Guinea.
Archaeology
Clay tablets unearthed this year at Uruk and inscribed with some of the earliest form of writing known show no evidence of having been derived from pictographs, suggesting that writing may have had some different origin.
Astronomy
On February 18 Clyde William Tombaugh [b. Streator, Illinois, February 4, 1906, d. Las Cruces, New Mexico, January 17, 1997] discovers the planet Pluto.
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar [b. Lahore, India, October 19, 1910, d. Chicago, Illinois, August 21, 1995] provides a theory for the existence of white dwarf stars and determines that a white dwarf can exist only if its mass is less than 1.44 times that of the Sun. This comes to be known as Chandrasekhar's limit. Arthur Eddington had earlier predicted white dwarf stars, but will disagree with Chandrasekhar on the details in a notable scientific argument of the 1930s, with Chandrasekhar generally seen as the winner.
Swiss-American astronomer Robert Julius Trumpler [b. Zurich, Switzerland, October 2, 1886, d. Oakland, California, September 10, 1956] shows the existence of diffuse interstellar dust by studying its dimming effect on star clusters. As one consequence of the dust, the size of the Milky Way Galaxy is about three-fifths as big as previous estimates, which assumed that observed dimming was caused by distance.
Bernard Ferdinand Lyot [b. Paris, February 27, 1897, d. on a train near Cairo, Egypt, April 2, 1952] builds the coronagraph, a special telescope in which a baffle stops the light from the solar disk and allows observation of the corona.
Bruno Benedetto Rossi, Italian-American physicist [b. Venice, Italy, April 13, 1905, d. Cambridge, Massachusetts, November 21, 1993], points out that cosmic rays should be deflected by Earth's magnetic field -- to the east if positive and to the west if negative. Studies show the deflection to the east, establishing that most cosmic rays are positive.
Russian-German optician Bernhard Voldemar Schmidt [b. Neissaar Island, Estonia, March 30, 1879, d. Hamburg, Germany, December 1, 1935] invents the corrector for a combined camera and telescope, producing a device that allows very wide-angle views with little distortion. The Schmidt telescope comes to dominate astronomy because it is free from coma, an aberration.
Chemistry
John Howard Northrup [b. Yonkers, New York, July 5, 1891, d. Wickenburg, Arizona, May 27, 1987) crystallizes the enzyme pepsin, an important step toward understanding the chemical nature of enzymes.
Arne Wilhelm Tiselius [b. Stockholm, Sweden, August 10, 1902, d. Uppsala, Sweden, October 29, 1971] introduces electrophoresis, a method for separating proteins in suspension using electric currents.
Albert Szent-Györgyi succeeds in isolating vitamin C from capsicum (peppers).
Hans Fischer of Germany wins the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his analysis of blood heme. .
Communication
Photoflash light bulbs are introduced for use in photography.
Computers
Vannevar Bush develops at MIT a prototype of the electromechanical analog computer, the Differential Analyzer, which can solve differential equations. He will patent the idea in 1935 and a large Differential Analyzer will be built for use during World War II.
Construction
The Chrysler Building in New York City, at 319 m (1046 ft), briefly replaces both the Eiffel Tower and the Woolworth Building as the world's tallest structure, although it will soon be overshadowed by the nearby Empire State Building. See also
Construction starts on the Empire State Building in New York; it will be finished in 1931.
Earth science
Charles William Beebe [b. Brooklyn, New York, July 29, 1877, d. Simla Research Station, near Arima, Trinidad, June 4, 1962] and Otis Barton dive to 417 m (1368 ft) in their new submersible, the bathysphere, a hollow steel ball suspended by a cable.
Energy
The first heat pump, a kind of reversed refrigerator, is installed in the home of T.G.N. Haldane. See also
Food & agriculture
The Postum Company begins marketing frozen foods for the first time. .
Sliced bread is introduced by a baker in Battle Creek, Michigan. Inventor Otto Frederick Rohwedder had worked from 1912 until 1928 to develop a bread slicing machine -- his final version not only slices the bread but also wraps the loaf, countering concerns that sliced bread would grow stale too quickly.
Materials
Waldo L. Semon [b. Demopolis, Alabama, September 10, 1898, d. Hudson, Ohio, May 26, 1999] of the B.F. Goodrich Company invents polyvinyl chloride. I. G. Farbenindustrie in Germany develops polystyrene. About this time melamine resins (plastics) are also invented .
English physical biochemist William Thomas Astbury [b. Stoke-on-Trent, England, February 25, 1898, d. Leeds, England, June 4, 1961] discovers that wool has a different X-ray diffraction pattern when it is stretched. This leads him to use X-ray diffraction techniques to study the three-dimensional structure of proteins.
About this time lead begins to be added to commercially sold gasoline to prevent knocking.
Mathematics
L. G. Schnirelman proves some number k exists such that every sufficiently large number is the sum of at most k prime numbers, but the proof yields no clues as to the value of k. This is a generalization of Goldbach's conjecture that every even number greater than two is the sum of two primes.
Medicine & health
Bernardo Alberto Houssay, Argentinean physiologist [b. Buenos Aires, April 10, 1887, d. Buenos Aires, September 21, 1971] demonstrates that the pituitary gland produces a hormone that has the opposite effect from insulin, demonstrating the complexity of the endocrine system.
Ernest H. Volwiler [b. Hamilton, Ohio, 1893, d. Lake Forest, Illinois, October 3, 1992] and Donalee L. Tabern [b. Bowling Green, Ohio, January 27, 1900, d. December 31, 1974] formulate Nembutal (pentobarbital sodium), a barbiturate used for inducing hypnotic sleep.
Karl Landsteiner of the United States wins the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for his definition of four human blood groups.
Physics
The lambda point of helium, where liquid helium changes from one form (helium 1) to another (helium 2) is discovered.
Paul Dirac's Principles of Quantum Mechanics formulates a general mathematical theory in which matrix mechanics and wave mechanics are special cases.
Wolfgang Pauli proposes that an unknown particle (christened the neutrino by Enrico Fermi in 1932) accounts for the apparent violation of the law of conservation of energy in beta decay.
Isidor Isaac Rabi [b. Rymanów, Austria (Poland), July 29, 1898, d. New York City, January 11, 1988] develops a precise method of using beams of molecules to study the magnetic properties of atomic nuclei. He measures the rotation of atoms and molecules and determines such properties as the mechanical and magnetic moments of atomic nuclei.
Chandrasekhara Raman of India wins the Nobel Prize for physics for his laws of light diffusion.
Tools
Frits (Frederik) Zernike [b. Amsterdam, Netherlands, July 16, 1888, d. Naarden, Netherlands, March 10, 1966] invents the phase-contrast microscope, which reveals the structures of cells and tissues without staining, using instead the subtle differences in phase of light that passes through the material.
Transportation
British engineer Frank Whittle [b. Coventry, England, June 1, 1907, d. Columbia, Maryland, August 8, 1996] patents the jet engine, 11 years before an aircraft flies using jet power. See also.
Engineer Cedric Bernard Dicksee [b. England, 1888, d. 1981] develops a diesel engine suitable for road vehicles; it is an 8.1 liter, six-cylinder engine that is installed in trucks.
Fantastic post.
Shows how the Dishonorable and Ignorant Mr. Paulsen would like to reprsent the state of science in 1930 as similar to that of the darkest ages of history.
You exposed that he is familiar with neither science or history.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say we knew diddley-squat about marijuana in 1930 compared to what we know today.