1933 in science

The year 1933 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy

 * October 13 – The British Interplanetary Society is founded.
 * Walter Baade and Fritz Zwicky invent the concept of the neutron star, a new type of celestial object, suggesting that supernovae might be created by the collapse of a normal star to form a neutron star.
 * Sir Arthur Eddington publishes The Expanding Universe: Astronomy's 'Great Debate', 1900–1931 in Cambridge.
 * Comedian Will Hay observes the periodic Great White Spot on Saturn from his private observatory in London.
 * Fritz Zwicky postulates the existence of dark matter.

Chemistry

 * Gilbert N. Lewis isolates the first sample of pure heavy water by electrolysis.
 * Morris S. Kharasch and Frank R. Mayo propose that free radicals are responsible for anti-Markovnikov addition of hydrogen bromide to allyl bromide.

Earth sciences

 * March 10 – Long Beach earthquake in Southern California: First recording of earthquake strong ground motions by an accelerograph network, installed in 1932 by the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey.

Mathematics

 * Andrey Kolmogorov publishes Foundations of the Theory of Probability, laying the modern axiomatic foundations of probability theory.
 * David Champernowne, while still a Cambridge undergraduate, publishes his work on the Champernowne constant in real numbers.
 * Alfréd Haar introduces Haar measure.
 * Jerzy Neyman and Egon Pearson publish the Neyman–Pearson lemma.
 * Stanley Skewes discovers Skewes' number.

Physics

 * September 12 – Leó Szilárd, waiting for a red light on Southampton Row in Bloomsbury (London), conceives the idea of the nuclear chain reaction.

Physiology and medicine

 * April 3 – First attempted human kidney transplant, by Dr Yuri Voronoy in the Soviet city of Kherson; the recipient dies 2 days later due to incompatibility of blood type with the (cadaveric) donor.
 * July 8 – English researchers Wilson Smith, Christopher Andrewes and Patrick Laidlaw report isolating a human influenza A virus and its transferability to ferrets.
 * July 14 – Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring enacted in Nazi Germany allowing compulsory sterilization of citizens suffering from a list of alleged genetic disorders.
 * Manfred Sakel begins to practice insulin shock therapy on psychiatric patients in Vienna.

Technology

 * March 7 – The hydraulic torque converter is patented by Alf Lysholm.
 * June – A research group at RCA headed by Vladimir K. Zworykin publicly launches the iconoscope, the first practical cathode ray tube television camera.
 * June 26 – American Totalisator unveils its first tote board, the electronic pari-mutuel betting machine, at the Arlington Park race track near Chicago.

Organizations

 * Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago) first opens to the public, as part of the Century of Progress Exposition.
 * The Institute for Advanced Study opens at Princeton, New Jersey, attracting Albert Einstein, John von Neumann and Kurt Gödel.
 * Sheffield Trades Historical Society (later South Yorkshire Industrial History Society) established in England.

Awards

 * Nobel Prizes
 * Physics – Erwin Schrödinger and Paul Dirac
 * Chemistry – not awarded
 * Physiology or Medicine – Thomas Hunt Morgan

Births

 * January 6 – Oleg Makarov (died 2003), Soviet cosmonaut.
 * January 18 – David Bellamy (died 2019), English botanist.
 * March 9 – Sir David Weatherall (died 2018), English molecular geneticist.
 * March 10 – Patricia Bergquist (died 2009), New Zealand scientist specializing in anatomy and taxonomy.
 * March 23 – Philip Zimbardo, American social psychologist.
 * April 1 – Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, French physicist and Nobel laureate
 * April 14 – Yuri Oganessian, Russian nuclear physicist.
 * April 26 – Arno Allan Penzias (died 2024), German-born American physicist and radio astronomer.
 * May 22 – Chen Jingrun (died 1996), Chinese mathematician.
 * July 9 – Oliver Sacks (died 2015), English-born neurologist.
 * July 12 – Max Birnstiel (died 2014), Swiss molecular biologist.
 * August 10 – Ed Posner (died 1993), American mathematician.
 * August 15
 * Stanley Milgram (died 1984), American social psychologist.
 * Michael Rutter (died 2021) English child psychiatrist.
 * September 6 – Juliet Clutton-Brock (died 2015), English zooarchaeologist.
 * September 10 – Yevgeny Khrunov (died 2000), Soviet cosmonaut.
 * September 26 – Charles C. Conley (died 1984), American mathematician specializing in dynamical systems.
 * October 2 – Sir John Gurdon, English developmental biologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
 * October 9 – Sir Peter Mansfield (died 2017), English physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
 * November 1 – Dijen K. Ray-Chaudhuri, Bengali-born mathematician.
 * November 4 – Sir Charles K. Kao (died 2018), Chinese electrical engineer and physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
 * November 14 – Akira Endo (died 2024), Japanese biochemist.
 * December 22 – Thomas Stockham (died 2004), American electrical engineer and inventor
 * December 23 – Akihito, ichthyologist and Emperor of Japan.

Deaths

 * January 14 – Sir Robert Jones, 1st Baronet (born 1857), Welsh orthopaedic surgeon.
 * May 22 – Sándor Ferenczi (born 1873), Hungarian psychoanalyst.
 * June 14 – Ernest William Moir (born 1862), British civil engineer.
 * September 25 – Paul Ehrenfest (born 1880), Austrian physicist and mathematician.
 * October 29
 * Albert Calmette (born 1863), French physician, bacteriologist and immunologist.
 * Paul Painlevé (born 1863), mathematician and statesman, 62nd Prime Minister of France.
 * November 3 – Pierre Paul Émile Roux (born 1853), French physician, bacteriologist and immunologist.
 * December 8 – John Joly (born 1857), Irish physicist.