1908 in science

The year 1908 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Archaeology

* A 40,000-year-old Neandertal boy skeleton is found at Le Moustier in southwest France.

Chemistry

* Heike Kamerlingh Onnes liquefies helium.

Physics

* Hans Geiger and Ernest Rutherford invent the Geiger counter.

Mathematics

* Ernst Zermelo axiomizes set theory, thus avoiding Cantor's contradictions.
* Josip Plemelj solves the Riemann problem about the existence of a differential equation with a given monodromic group and uses Sokhotsky-Plemelj formulae.

Technology

* A long-distance radio message is sent from the Eiffel Tower for the first time.
* Henry Ford develops the assembly line method of automobile manufacturing and produces the first Model T automobile.

Awards

* Nobel Prizes
** Physics - Gabriel Lippmann
** Chemistry - Ernest Rutherford
** Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine - Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov and Paul Ehrlich

Births

* January 15 - Edward Teller (d. 2003), physicist, inventor of the hydrogen bomb.
* January 22 - Lev Davidovich Landau (d. 1968), Russian physicist.
* February 11 - Vivian Ernest Fuchs (d. 1999), geologist and explorer.
* May 23 - John Bardeen (d. 1991), physicist, co-inventor of the transistor. Only physicist to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics twice.
* September 6 - Louis Essen (d. 1997), physicist, co-developer of the first practical atomic clock.

Deaths

* January 3 - Charles Augustus Young (b. 1834), astronomer.
* August 25 - Henri Becquerel (b. 1852), physicist.