1938 - Science

Science

French cellular biologist André Lwoff, 36, and a colleague set up a microbial physiology research center (Le Grenier) within the Pasteur Institute. They will determine the manner in which a cell's genetic code may be transcribed and read, providing the foundation for much of modern biology and for subsequent cancer research.

English biochemist Archer (John Porter) Martin, 28, of the Wool Industries Research Association works with Trinity College, Cambridge, student Richard (Laurence Millington) Synge, 23, to develop a technique (partition chromatography) that increases the ability of chemists to separate complex mixtures. Martin has been investigating the amino acids that make up the protein in wool fiber, but the similarity of their chemical structures has made it difficult to separate them using established methods. By exposing them to different solvents, Martin and Synge find that if they add methyl orange dye to an amino-acid mixture and pour the solution down a glass column filled with ground up silica gel and water the amino acids will separate. They will improve the technique in the next 6 years, replacing the separating column with a slip of paper and a stationary liquid; the amino acids will then separate into a series of spots on the paper, and by dissolving a spot a scientist will be able to measure the amounts of particular amino acids in various proteins. Paper partition chromatography will provide a quick and economical means of simplifying the separation of closely related chemicals (such as amino acids) for identification and permit extensive advances in chemical, biological, and medical research.

Dutch physicist Frits Zernike, 50, at the State University of Groningen builds a phase-contrast microscope that enables biologists to see bacteria that were heretofore invisible without staining them (and thereby killing them). Incorporating a principle that Zirnike discovered 4 years ago, the microscope illuminates transparent microorganisms, making them generate a spatial phase pattern of brightness directly proportional to the optical thickness of the object, and when a phase-contrast filter is added to the biologist's eyepiece he or she can view the bacteria.

British authorities in the Sudan appoint abolitionist-turned archaeologist Anthony J. Arkell commissioner for archaeology and anthropology (see human rights, 1920). Now 40, Arkell will undertake several digs in the next 10 years, uncovering a previously unknown area of prehistory in the area (see Nonfiction, 1955).

The Geochemical Laws of the Distribution of the Elements (Geochemische Verteilungesgesetze der Elemente) (eighth of eight volumes) by mineralogist-petrologist Victor M. Goldschmidt, now 50, lays the foundation of inorganic crystal chemistry.

Columbia University physicist Isidor Rabi uses his resonance method to reveal quadrupole moment of the deuteron (see 1937; Alvarez, Bloch, 1939).

German chemist Otto Hahn, 59, produces the first nuclear fission of uranium December 18. Hahn has found that the nucleus of certain uranium atoms can be split into approximately equal halves by bombarding them with neutrons, releasing not only energy but also neutrons that can, in turn, split further uranium nuclei (see Fermi, 1934). Assisting Hahn are his colleague Fritz Strassmann and Austro-Swedish physicist Lise Meitner, 60, whose nephew Otto Frisch, 34, will help her work out the implications of Hahn's observations (see 1939).

Astronomer William H. Pickering dies in Jamaica, British West Indies, January 16 at age 79; astronomer George Ellery Hale at Pasadena, Calif., February 21 at age 69 (see Palomar Observatory, 1948); physicist Charles E. Guillaume at Sèvres June 13 at age 77; astronomer William Wallace Campbell at San Francisco June 14 at age 76; physicist Edwin H. Hall at Boston November 20 at age 83.

An International Gulf Stream expedition headed by German oceanographer Georg Wüst, now 47, follows up on studies made by Wüst's German Atlantic expedition of 1925 to 1927 (see Franklin, 1769). Working aboard the research ship Meteor, the Atlantic expedition produced a massive amount of data about deep-current structure, salinity, and temperature (see Stommel, 1965).

A strange fish brought up in the nets of a trawler December 22 from 40 fathoms in the estuary of South Africa's Chalumna River is identified at a fish market by local natural-history museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, 28, as a coelacanth, believed to have been extinct for at least 70 million years. Nearly six feet long and weighing 150 pounds, the steely-blue, lobe-finned fish will be named Latimeria chalumnae Smith after amateur ichthyologist J. L. B. (James Leonard Brierley) Smith, 41, who lectures in chemistry at Rhodes University College in Grahams, will confirm Courtenay-Latimer's finding, and will take credit for making the initial identification (see 1952).