1949 - Science

Science

Glasgow-born biochemist Alexander (Robertus) Todd, 41, at Cambridge synthesizes adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a nucleoside essential to energy utilization by living organisms. He also synthesizes flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD) (see 1954).

King Solomon's Ring: New Light on Animal Ways (Er redete mit dem Vich, dem Vögeln und Fischen: King Solomon's Ring) by Austrian zoologist and theologist Konrad (Zacharias) Lorenz, 46, describes his discovery of the "imprinting" by which hatchling Greylag geese and other birds learn to recognize substitute parents early in life. Having founded the science of ethology (the study of animal behavior in the wild), Lorenz shows that Darwinian natural selection processes operate not only in shaping physical form but also in determining behavioral characteristics.

Zoologist Karl von Frisch establishes the fact that honeybees employ the sun as a compass through their perception of polarized light (see 1919). Now 62, he will find that they can orient themselves even when the sun is not visible, evidently by recalling patterns of polarization in the sky at various times of day and locating previously encountered landmarks.

Nobel chemist Friedrich K. R. Bergius dies at Buenos Aires March 30 at age 64, having helped the German war effort with his method for making gasoline from coal and heavy oil (and ways to break down wood molecules to produce alcohol and sugar); Nobel physiologist August Krogh dies at Copenhagen September 13 at age 74.