1912 | Science
Science
German physicist Max (Theodor Felix) von Laue, 32, and two of his students at the University of Zürich conduct experiments that verify his theory that if an X-ray beam is passed through a crystal, the resulting diffraction will form a pattern on a photographic plate placed at a right angle to the direction of the ray, and this pattern will mark out the symmetrical arrangements of the atoms in the crystal (see Barkla, 1903). The discovery enables scientists to study the structure of crystals and marks the beginning of solid-state physics, which will prove essential to the development of modern electronics (see Bragg, Moseley, 1913).
Piltdown Man promises to be the "missing link" between man and ape in Darwin's theory of evolution. The Manchester Guardian reports November 21 that solicitor Charles Dawson, 48, an amateur geologist, has unearthed evidence at Barkham Manor in East Sussex of fossil skull fragments (they will later will be named Eoanthropus Dawsoni, "Dawson's Dawn Man") and gained the support of British Museum geologist Arthur S. (Smith) Woodward, also 48. But many paleontologists have doubts about the find (see 1953).
Biologist-geneticist Nettie Maria Stevens dies at Baltimore May 4 at age 50; plant cytologist Eduard Adolf Strasburger at Bonn May 18 at age 68; chemist Paul-Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran at Paris May 28 at age 74; mathematician Jules-Henri Poincaré at Paris July 7 at age 58.