1918 in science

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

Astronomy

* 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

* 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".

Physics

* J. 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.

Technology

* Edwin Armstrong invents the superheterodyne receiver.
* Theodore von Karman and Asbóth Oszkár build the first co-axial helicopter.
* Anton Fokker invents the interrupter gear.
* A. M. Nicolson invents the radio crystal oscillator
* Charles Strite invents the pop-up toaster.
* Edward Hugh Hebern patents the Hebern rotor machine.

Awards

* Nobel Prize
** Physics - Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck
** Chemistry - Fritz Haber
** Medicine - not awarded

Births

* January 27 - Antonín Mrkos (d. 1996), astronomer.
* March 16 - Frederick Reines (d. 1998), physicist.
* April 4 - Joseph Ashbrook (d. 1980), astronomer.
* April 25 - Gérard de Vaucouleurs (d. 1995), astronomer.
* May 11 - Richard Feynman (d. 1988), physicist, Nobel laureate.
* July 15 - Bertram N. Brockhouse (d. 2003), physicist.
* August 13 - Frederick Sanger, molecular biologist.
* September 27 - Martin Ryle (d. 1984), astronomer.
* November 10 - Ernst Otto Fischer (d. 2007), chemist, Nobel laureate.
* November 19 - Hendrik C. van de Hulst (d. 2000), astronomer.
* December 25 - Tamara Mikhailovna Smirnova, astronomer.

Deaths

* January 6 - Georg Cantor (b. 1845), mathematician.
* January 26 - Ewald Hering (b. 1834), physiologist.
* January 31 - Ivan Pulyui (b. 1845), physicist.
* April 20 - Karl Ferdinand Braun (b. 1850), physicist.
* May 31 - Alexander Mitscherlich (b. 1836), chemist.
* June 27 - George Mary Searle (b. 1839), astronomer.
* September 7 - Peter Ludwig Mejdell Sylow (b. 1832), mathematician.
* November 3 - Aleksandr Lyapunov (b. 1857), mathematician and physicist.