1917 - Science

Science

The Electron by University of Chicago physicist Robert A. (Andrews) Millikan, 49, describes the atomic particle that he has been the first to isolate (see Rutherford, 1911). Millikan has improved on the falling-drop method of measuring the unit electrical charge (e) devised by John S. E. Townsend in 1897; this has enabled him to measure the electron's charge more accurately, and he has calculated the first accurate value of Avogadro's number—the number of molecules in a mole (or the number of atoms in a gram atom). Future work will determine that Millikan's result is not entirely accurate but very close.

General Electric research physicist Albert W. (Wallace) Hull, 37, devises a powder method of using X-rays to study crystal structures (he is unaware of last year's finding by Peter Debye and Paul Scherrer). The ability to study crystalline materials in finely divided microcrystalline form will enable Hull to determine for the first time the crystal structure of iron and most other common metals.

On Growth and Form by Scottish zoologist D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, 57, departs from the work of previous zoologists by interpreting and analyzing the growth and structure of organic form in mathematical and physical terms instead of in terms of comparative anatomy, evolutionary theory, and phylogenetics.

Nobel chemist Johann F. W. Adolf von Baeyer dies at Starnberg, Oberbayern, August 20 at age 81; mathematician Georg Frobenius at his native Berlin August 3 at age 67; Nobel biochemist Eduard Buchner is killed in action at Focsani, Romania, August 24 at age 57.