1929 - Science

Science

Albert Einstein announces January 30 that he has found a key to the formulation of a unified gravitational field theory—a group of equations applicable not only to gravitation but also to electromagnetics and subatomic phenomena (see 1916). His six pages of equations, however, are unprovable, incomprehensible, ignore quantum mechanics, and are incorrect. Says U.S. engineer George Francis Gilette, "[By 1940] the relativity theory will be considered a joke" (see 1939).

Astronomer Edwin Hubble measures the red shifts of the Milky Way's nebulae, finds that the nebulae are all speeding away, and will lead others to conclude that the universe, heretofore considered static, is constantly expanding (see 1923). Hubble himself does not accept this new view of cosmology (see 1992). London-born physicist-mathematician James Jeans, 52, has been working as a research associate at California's Mt. Wilson Observatory since 1923 and last year became the first to propose the idea that matter is continuously created throughout the universe.

Rockefeller Institute chemist Phoebus Levene discovers part of the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecule. Now 60, Levene isolated the five-carbon sugar d-ribose from the ribonucleic acid (RNA) molecule 20 years ago and this year discovers 2-deoxyribose, a sugar derived from d-ribose by removing an oxygen atom. He will determine how the nucleic acid components combine to form nucleotides and how nucleotides, in turn, combine in chains, but the significance of his findings will not be discovered until after his death (see Avery, 1944).

Irish crystallographer Kathleen Lonsdale (née Yardley), 26, at University College, London, uses X-ray diffraction analysis of organic crystals to work out the structure of hexamethylbenzene. She will solve the structure of hexachlorobenzene in 1931, using Fourier analysis (see 1945).

Archaeologist Wenzhong Pei, 26, discovers the skull of Peking Man (see 1927). Estimated to be 500,000 years old, it provides the first strong evidence of man's evolution from less-advanced forms of life.