1909 in science

The year 1909 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Archaeology

* Discovery of the Burgess Shale Cambrian fossil site

Astronomy

* Comet Halley first becomes visible on a photographic plate.

Geology

* Ernest Shackleton's expedition finds the magnetic South Pole.

Physics

* Albert Einstein together with Marcel Grossmann starts to develop a theory which would bind metric tensor "g"_ik, which defines a space geometry, with a source of gravity, that is with mass
* Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden discover large angle deflections of alpha particles by thin metal foils
* Ernest Rutherford and Thomas Royds demonstrate that alpha particles are doubly ionized helium atoms

Medicine

* Karl Landsteiner develops system of blood groups.

Technology

* Leo Baekeland presents the Bakelite hard thermosetting plastic
* Einar Dessau uses a short-wave radio transmitter becoming the first radio broadcaster.
* Louis Bleriot is the first man to fly across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air craft.

Awards

* Nobel Prizes
** Physics - Guglielmo Marconi, Karl Ferdinand Braun
** Chemistry - Wilhelm Ostwald
** Medicine - Emil Theodor Kocher

Births

* January 5 - Stephen Cole Kleene (d. 1994), mathematician.
* April 13 - Stanislaw Marcin Ulam (d. 1984), mathematician.
* May 7 - Edwin H. Land (d. 1991), inventor and founder of Polaroid.
* November 24 - Gerhard Gentzen (d. 1945), mathematician.
* Giulio Racah (d. 1965), Israeli mathematician and physicist.

Deaths

* January 12 - Hermann Minkowski (b. 1864), mathematician.
* July 11 - Simon Newcomb (b. 1835), astronomer.
* August 27 - Emil Christian Hansen (b. 1842), fermentation physiologist.