1903 in science

The year 1903 in science and technology included many events, some of which are listed below.

See also: 1902 in science, other events of 1903, 1904 in science and the list of years in science.

Aeronautics

• First documented, successful, controlled, powered flight of an aircraft with a petrol engine by Orville Wright
• Konstantin Tsiolkovsky begins a series of papers discussing the use of rocketry to reach outer space, space suits, and colonization of the solar system

Biology

• Thomas Hunt Morgan discovers that chromosomes contain genes.
• The type specimen of the vampire squid (Vampyroteuthis infernalis) is described by Carl Chun.

Chemistry

• Peter Cooper Hewitt demonstrates the mercury-vapour lamp

Mathematics

• Fast Fourier Transform algorithm presented by Carle David Tolme Runge
• Edmund Georg Hermann Landau gives considerably simpler proof of the prime number theorem

Physics

• George Darwin and John Joly claim that radioactivity is partially responsible for the Earth's heat

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics - Antoine Henri Becquerel, Pierre Curie, and Marie Curie
  • Chemistry - Svante August Arrhenius
  • Medicine - Niels Ryberg Finsen

Births

• January 22 - Fritz Houtermans, physicist
• January 27 - John Carew Eccles, psychologist
• February 2 - Bartel Leendert van der Waerden, mathematician
• February 22 - Frank P. Ramsey, mathematician
• April 6 - Doc Edgerton, professor, electrical engineer
• April 25 - Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov, mathematician
• August 7 - Louis Leakey, archaeologist
• November 7 - Konrad Lorenz, zoologist
• November 27 - Lars Onsager, chemist
• December 28 - John von Neumann, mathematician

Deaths

• February 1 - George Gabriel Stokes, mathematician and physicist (* 1819
• March 28 - Emile Baudot, telegraph engineer (* 1845)
• April 28 - Willard Gibbs, physical chemist (* 1839)