Events, Verisoph

c. 1859 Phineas Quimby and mental healing 0 cit. Clockmaker turned healer Phineas Quimby taught that illness comes from mistaken beliefs and can be cured by correcting the mind. His mental-healing ideas are the direct root of the New Thought movement and influenced Mary Baker Eddy, who was once his patient. religion / science ●●●

24 November 1859 Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species 0 cit. Darwin argued that species change over time through natural selection, offering a natural mechanism for the diversity of life. He rushed the book into print after Alfred Russel Wallace independently reached the same idea, a shared credit often forgotten. It reshaped biology and set off a long argument with religion that continues in places today. religion / science ●●●

c. 1860 The nineteenth century makes calculus rigorous 0 cit. Augustin-Louis Cauchy, Bernhard Riemann, and Karl Weierstrass replaced the loose talk of infinitely small quantities with careful definitions of limits and continuity. This drive for rigor put the calculus, two centuries old, on a solid logical footing at last. It reflected a wider demand that mathematics prove its claims from precise foundations rather than intuition. science ●●●

1861 Germ theory of disease 0 cit. Louis Pasteur showed that microbes cause disease and spoilage rather than arising on their own. Germ theory led to sterilization, safe food and modern public health. science ●●●●

c. 1861 Pasteur and the germ theory of disease 0 cit. Louis Pasteur's experiments argued that microbes, not spontaneous generation or bad air, cause fermentation and disease. His public swan-neck flask demonstration was carefully staged to win the argument. The germ theory transformed medicine, surgery, and public health. science ●●●

2 July 1862 Morrill Land-Grant Act 0 cit. Congress grants federal land to the states to endow colleges teaching agriculture and the mechanic arts. The act seeds dozens of public universities, from Cornell to MIT to the great state schools of the Midwest and West. science / society ●●●

1 August 1863 Founding of Bayer 0 cit. Friedrich Bayer and Johann Weskott found a dye factory in Barmen. The company moves into pharmaceuticals and in 1899 trademarks aspirin, one of the most widely used drugs in history. economy / science ●●●

1864 Spencer coins "survival of the fittest" 0 cit. Herbert Spencer applied a distorted reading of evolution to society, coining "survival of the fittest." Social Darwinism was used to justify inequality, empire, and neglect of the poor as natural law. science / society ●●

6 April 1865 Founding of BASF 0 cit. The Badische Anilin- und Sodafabrik is founded to make synthetic dyes on the Rhine. It later industrializes the Haber-Bosch process for synthetic ammonia and becomes the world's largest chemical company. economy / science ●●●

1865 Maxwell's equations unify electricity, magnetism, and light 0 cit. James Clerk Maxwell showed that electricity and magnetism are two sides of one field and that light itself is an electromagnetic wave. His equations predicted radio waves before anyone had detected them. It was one of the great unifications in physics and set the stage for relativity. science ●●●

1866 Mendel's laws of heredity, ignored then rediscovered 0 cit. The monk Gregor Mendel worked out the basic rules of inheritance by breeding pea plants, but his paper went almost unnoticed for decades. It was rediscovered around 1900, long after his death, and became the basis of genetics. Some later analysts have argued his data look suspiciously clean, a debate that has never been fully settled. science ●●

1869 Galton's Hereditary Genius lays eugenic groundwork unproven 0 cit. Galton argued in Hereditary Genius that intelligence and ability were inherited and concentrated in certain families, an unproven claim that ignored the role of wealth and privilege. It became a foundation for the eugenics movement. science / society ●●

1869 Galton publishes Hereditary Genius 0 cit. Francis Galton argued in Hereditary Genius that talent and character were inherited and could be strengthened across generations through selective breeding of people. The book laid the groundwork for the eugenics movement. science / society ●●●

1869 Mendeleev arranges the periodic table 0 cit. Dmitri Mendeleev arranged the elements by weight and properties into a table, and boldly left gaps for elements not yet found. When those elements turned up with the predicted properties, his system won wide acceptance. Others were groping toward similar tables, but his willingness to predict set his apart. science ●●

1871 Gramme builds a practical dynamo 0 cit. Zenobe Gramme built a dynamo that produced a steady electric current for industrial use. Reliable generators made large-scale electric power possible. science / technology ●●●●

September 1873 Founding of the International Meteorological Organization 0 cit. The first International Meteorological Congress in Vienna founds the International Meteorological Organization to standardize weather observations across borders. It was replaced by the World Meteorological Organization in 1950. diplomacy / science ●●

1874 Cantor counts the infinite with set theory 0 cit. Georg Cantor proved that some infinities are larger than others, showing the real numbers cannot be matched one to one with the counting numbers. His set theory gave mathematics a new foundation but drew fierce attack from contemporaries who rejected completed infinities. Only later was his work widely honored as a turning point in modern mathematics. culture / science ●●●●

20 May 1875 Metre Convention 0 cit. Treaty among seventeen states establishing the International Bureau of Weights and Measures and uniform metric standards. It created the framework that still governs the world's measurement units. diplomacy / science / technology ●●●

20 May 1875 Founding of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures 0 cit. Seventeen nations sign the Metre Convention in Paris, creating the International Bureau of Weights and Measures at Sevres to maintain worldwide standards of measurement, the basis of the metric system's international governance. diplomacy / science ●●●

3 March 1879 Founding of the United States Geological Survey 0 cit. Congress consolidates the great western surveys into a single agency to classify public lands and examine the nation's geology and mineral resources. The USGS becomes the government's mapmaker and earth science bureau. exploration / science ●●

1879 The practical incandescent light bulb 0 cit. Thomas Edison developed a long lasting incandescent bulb suitable for everyday use. Electric light replaced flame and extended work and social life past sundown. science / technology ●●●●●

22 October 1879 Edison demonstrates a practical incandescent lamp 0 cit. Thomas Edison produced a long-lasting incandescent light bulb and a system to power it. Electric lighting began to replace gas and oil in homes and streets. science / technology ●●●●

1882 Central electric power station 0 cit. Edison's Pearl Street Station began supplying electricity to customers over a distribution grid. Central power stations made electricity a public utility and powered homes, industry and cities. science / technology ●●●●●

1882 Koch pins diseases to specific microbes 0 cit. Robert Koch identified the microbes that cause tuberculosis and other diseases and set out rules, now called Koch's postulates, for proving a germ causes an illness. His rigorous methods turned germ theory into a working science of specific diseases. The bitter rivalry between his German school and Pasteur's French one drove much of the era's progress. science ●●

1883 Francis Galton coins the term eugenics 0 cit. British scientist Francis Galton coined the word eugenics in 1883, proposing that human reproduction be guided to increase desirable traits and reduce undesirable ones. The idea became the intellectual root of later movements to control who was allowed to reproduce. science / society ●●●●

1883 Bertillon anthropometric identification system adopted by Paris police 0 cit. Alphonse Bertillon's system of measuring body dimensions to identify repeat offenders was formally adopted by the Paris police prefecture. It was the first systematic method used by a police force to identify individuals, and it spread to other countries over the following two decades. Bertillonage was later displaced by fingerprinting, which proved more reliable and easier to apply. science ●●

October 1884 Greenwich Mean Time and Global Standardization 0 cit. An international conference adopted the Greenwich meridian as the world's prime meridian and basis for global time. British maritime and commercial dominance placed the center of world time at London. science / technology ●●●●

c. 1887 Hygienic Laboratory, Origin of the NIH 0 cit. Dr. Joseph Kinyoun sets up a one-room bacteriology laboratory at the Marine Hospital on Staten Island to test immigrants for cholera and other diseases. The Laboratory of Hygiene moves to Washington and in 1930 becomes the National Institute of Health, ancestor of today's NIH. science ●●●

1890 Rockefeller founds the University of Chicago 0 cit. John D. Rockefeller provided the founding endowment for the University of Chicago in 1890. It opened to students in 1892 and became a leading research university. culture / science ●●●

c. 1891 Juan Vucetich creates the first fingerprint classification system 0 cit. Working for the police in Buenos Aires province, Croatian-Argentine police official Juan Vucetich developed a practical system for classifying and filing fingerprints for criminal identification. His system predated and ran parallel to the Galton-Henry system used in Britain. Argentina became the first country to make fingerprinting its official method of criminal identification. science ●●

1892 Francis Galton publishes Finger Prints 0 cit. Francis Galton published Finger Prints, the first book to establish that fingerprint patterns are unique to individuals and persist unchanged through life. The book provided the statistical and classification groundwork that police forces would later use to build fingerprint identification systems. Galton's classification scheme was later refined by Edward Henry into the system Scotland Yard adopted. science ●●

c. June 1892 First fingerprint-based criminal conviction, the Rojas case 0 cit. Francisca Rojas was convicted of murdering her two children after a bloody fingerprint left at the scene matched hers, using Juan Vucetich's newly developed classification system. It is documented as the first criminal case solved using fingerprint evidence. The case demonstrated fingerprinting's evidentiary value years before it was widely adopted elsewhere. science ●●●

1893 Hans Gross publishes Criminal Investigation and coins criminalistics 0 cit. Austrian magistrate Hans Gross published Handbuch fur Untersuchungsrichter, translated as Criminal Investigation, laying out methods for applying science to police work. He coined the term criminalistics for this approach. The book became a foundational text for early crime laboratories across Europe. science ●●

8 November 1895 X-rays 0 cit. Wilhelm Roentgen discovered rays that could pass through the body and image bones on a plate. X-rays gave medicine its first way to see inside a living patient. science ●●●●

20 July 1897 Founding of Marconi's wireless company 0 cit. Guglielmo Marconi registers the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company in London to commercialize radio. Its transatlantic transmissions and ship-to-shore wireless launch the radio communications industry. economy / science / technology ●●●

c. 1899 Dewey shapes progressive education 0 cit. John Dewey argued that schools should teach through experience and prepare students for democratic life. His progressive ideas influenced teaching methods in the United States and abroad. culture / science ●●●

1900 Hilbert's program and the twenty-three problems 0 cit. David Hilbert opened the new century by posing twenty-three unsolved problems that steered mathematics for decades. He later pushed a program to prove that all of mathematics could be built on a complete and consistent set of axioms. That confident dream would be undone within a generation by the work of Godel. science ●●●

3 March 1901 National Bureau of Standards, Origin of NIST 0 cit. Congress creates a national measurement laboratory to keep the country's physical standards and support industry and science. Renamed the National Institute of Standards and Technology in 1988, it remains the keeper of American weights, measures, and technical standards. science / technology ●●

12 December 1901 Marconi transmits first transatlantic radio signal 0 cit. Guglielmo Marconi reported receiving a wireless signal sent across the Atlantic on 12 December 1901. The demonstration showed radio could carry information without wires over long distances. science / technology ●●●

1901 Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research founded 0 cit. Rockefeller money founded the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in 1901. It became a major centre of biomedical science, later Rockefeller University. science ●●●

1901 Karl Landsteiner discovers human blood groups 0 cit. Karl Landsteiner identified the A, B, and O blood groups, work for which he later won the Nobel Prize. The discovery gave forensic investigators a way to distinguish blood samples and, eventually, to include or exclude suspects based on blood type found at crime scenes. Blood typing remained a core forensic serology tool until DNA profiling replaced it. science ●●

1901 Scotland Yard adopts the Henry Classification fingerprint system 0 cit. Edward Henry, building on Galton's research, developed a fingerprint classification system practical for large-scale police filing. Scotland Yard adopted the Henry system, establishing a Fingerprint Branch and phasing out Bertillon's anthropometric measurements. The system, with later modifications, became the basis for fingerprint filing used by police forces around the world for most of the twentieth century. science ●●

c. September 1902 First fingerprint conviction in Britain, the Harry Jackson case 0 cit. Harry Jackson was convicted of burglary after a fingerprint left on a freshly painted windowsill matched his prints on file with Scotland Yard's new Fingerprint Branch. It was the first criminal conviction in Britain secured using fingerprint evidence. The case helped establish fingerprinting as credible courtroom evidence in the British legal system. science ●●

c. 1903 Tsiolkovsky publishes the rocket equation 0 cit. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky published a paper deriving the equation that relates a rocket's velocity to its exhaust speed and mass of propellant. It showed that spaceflight was possible with liquid-fueled, staged rockets. science / technology ●●●●

1905 Founding of the International Institute of Agriculture 0 cit. At the initiative of David Lubin and King Victor Emmanuel III, states found the International Institute of Agriculture in Rome to collect world farm statistics. Its work passed to the FAO after 1945. diplomacy / economy / science ●●

30 June 1905 Einstein publishes special relativity 0 cit. Albert Einstein, then a patent clerk, submits his paper on special relativity, one of four groundbreaking papers that year. His work rebuilds the foundations of physics and later underpins nuclear energy and modern cosmology. science ●●●●

1905 Einstein's special relativity 0 cit. In his miracle year, Einstein argued that the speed of light is constant for all observers, so space and time stretch and shrink with motion. The same year he explained the photoelectric effect and Brownian motion. He built on work by Lorentz and Poincare, who had some of the pieces but not the full reinterpretation. science ●●●

30 June 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act, Origin of the FDA 0 cit. Spurred by exposes of filthy meatpacking plants and quack medicines, Congress bans misbranded and adulterated food and drugs. Enforcement by the Bureau of Chemistry evolves into the Food and Drug Administration, named in 1930. science / society ●●●

9 December 1907 Founding of the Office International d'Hygiène Publique 0 cit. Twelve states sign an agreement in Rome creating a Paris-based international health office to track epidemic diseases and administer sanitary conventions, a forerunner of the World Health Organization. diplomacy / science / society ●●

1907 British Eugenics Education Society founded 0 cit. The Eugenics Education Society was founded in London in 1907 to promote the study and application of eugenics in policy. It became a leading voice arguing that the state should influence which people had children. science / society ●●●

1907 Indiana passes the first compulsory sterilization law 0 cit. Indiana enacted the world's first compulsory sterilization law in 1907, authorizing the forced sterilization of people held in state institutions. It opened the way for similar laws in more than thirty US states. politics / science ●●●●

9 March 1907 Indiana Passes First Sterilization Law 0 cit. Indiana enacted the first eugenic sterilization law in the world, authorizing forced sterilization of people in state institutions judged "confirmed criminals, idiots, imbeciles and rapists." The law was signed by Governor J. Frank Hanly and applied to inmates of state prisons, reformatories, and homes for the "feeble-minded." It became the model that other states copied over the following decades. politics / science / society ●●●

c. 1 January 1907 Estimated 60,000 Americans Sterilized Under Eugenics Programs 0 cit. Historians including Paul Lombardo and Alexandra Minna Stern have estimated that more than 60,000 Americans were sterilized under state eugenics laws between 1907 and the programs' effective end in the 1970s, with some researchers placing the number closer to 70,000 once undercounted institutional and welfare-linked sterilizations are included. California, North Carolina, and Virginia accounted for a large share of the total. science / society ●●●

1908 Eugen Fischer studies the Basters of Rehoboth 0 cit. German anthropologist Eugen Fischer traveled to the colony to study people of mixed Nama and European descent known as Basters, developing racial theories about the effects of interbreeding between Europeans and Africans. His resulting book, published in 1913, argued for restricting the rights and reproduction of mixed-race populations. Fischer's work was later cited approvingly by Nazi race scientists, and he went on to head Nazi Germany's leading eugenics institute and to help draft the Nuremberg racial laws. science ●●●

2 July 1909 Haber synthesizes ammonia from nitrogen 0 cit. Fritz Haber showed how to make ammonia from atmospheric nitrogen and hydrogen under high pressure. The reaction opened the way to cheap synthetic fertilizer and explosives. science / technology ●●●●●

1909 The Rosicrucian Fellowship founded by Max Heindel 0 cit. Max Heindel founded the Rosicrucian Fellowship in 1909 and published The Rosicrucian Cosmo-Conception, presenting a Christian mystical and astrological teaching. The group established its headquarters, Mount Ecclesia, at Oceanside, California. religion / science ●●●

26 April 1909 California Enacts Sterilization Law 0 cit. California passed its own compulsory sterilization statute, allowing sterilization of people confined in state hospitals and prisons who were diagnosed as "feebleminded" or judged to have a hereditary disease or condition. Washington and Connecticut passed similar laws the same year. California went on to sterilize far more people than any other state, roughly a third of all sterilizations performed nationwide. politics / science / society ●●●

1910 Edmond Locard founds the first forensic crime laboratory 0 cit. Edmond Locard established a police laboratory in Lyon dedicated to the scientific examination of physical evidence, generally regarded as the first crime laboratory of its kind. Locard is best known for articulating the exchange principle, the idea that every contact between a criminal and a crime scene leaves a trace. His laboratory became a model that other countries, including the FBI, later copied. science ●●●

24 July 1912 First International Eugenics Congress meets in London 0 cit. Scientists and officials from many countries gathered to promote eugenics as a global movement. The congress helped spread policies of sterilization and racial ranking that had no sound scientific basis. politics / science ●●

c. 1912 Cattle quarantines and veterinary control undermine the herders 0 cit. The colonial state used disease-control quarantines to block pastoralists from moving and selling stock, ostensibly to protect settler herds from cattle diseases. The rules cut herders off from markets and dry-season grazing while doing little for the pastoralists themselves. Framed as science, the quarantine regime worked in practice to hem in and impoverish the herding economies. economy / science ●●

14 May 1913 Rockefeller Foundation is chartered 0 cit. The Rockefeller Foundation was chartered in New York in May 1913 to promote the well-being of people worldwide. It became one of the most influential philanthropic bodies of the twentieth century. science / society ●●●●

c. 1 January 1913 Sterilization Laws Spread Across the States 0 cit. Following Indiana and California, states including New Jersey, Iowa, New York, North Dakota, Michigan, Kansas, Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Oregon passed compulsory sterilization laws in the years before World War I. By the 1930s, roughly thirty states had enacted eugenic sterilization statutes, backed by the American Eugenics Society and state boards of health. politics / science / society ●●

3 March 1915 Founding of the NACA 0 cit. Congress created the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics to guide and coordinate American aviation research. The NACA later became the core of NASA in 1958. science / technology ●●●

c. 1915 Leone Lattes develops a forensic test for dried blood stains 0 cit. Italian physician Leone Lattes developed a method for determining the ABO blood group of dried bloodstains, applying Landsteiner's discovery directly to crime scene evidence. This gave investigators a practical way to test blood found at scenes rather than only fresh samples. The technique was used in criminal cases across Europe in the following decades. science ●●

1915 Einstein's general relativity reshapes gravity 0 cit. Einstein recast gravity not as a force but as the bending of space and time by mass and energy. The theory predicted that starlight would bend around the sun, confirmed by an eclipse expedition in 1919 that made him famous overnight. It remains our best description of gravity and the large-scale universe. science ●●●

1918 Office of Chief Medical Examiner founded in New York City 0 cit. New York City replaced its politically appointed coroner system with the first medical examiner's office in the United States, led by pathologist Charles Norris. Norris hired chemist Alexander Gettler, who built the office's toxicology laboratory and is widely regarded as the father of American forensic toxicology. Together they developed methods for detecting poisons that other jurisdictions later adopted. science ●●

28 July 1919 Founding of the International Astronomical Union 0 cit. no story Astronomers found the IAU at a constitutive assembly in Brussels to coordinate astronomy worldwide. It is the recognized authority for naming celestial bodies. diplomacy / science ●●

c. 1919 Goddard's report on reaching extreme altitudes 0 cit. Robert Goddard published "A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes" through the Smithsonian, laying out the math of rocket flight. The press mocked his suggestion that a rocket could reach the Moon. science / technology ●●●

c. 1920 to c. 1929 "Fitter Families" contests promote eugenics at fairs 0 cit. At state fairs, eugenicists ran "Fitter Families" contests that judged people on health and heredity like prize livestock. The events spread the false idea that human worth could be measured and bred. science / society ●

22 September 1921 Second International Eugenics Congress in New York 0 cit. Held at the American Museum of Natural History, the congress showcased eugenic exhibits and pushed for immigration limits based on supposed racial fitness. Its ideas fed directly into restrictive U.S. immigration law. politics / science ●

17 March 1921 Marie Stopes opens the first UK birth control clinic 0 cit. Marie Stopes opened Britain's first birth control clinic in London in 1921, offering free contraceptive advice to married women. Stopes was also an outspoken eugenicist who tied birth control to limiting reproduction of the poor. science / society ●●●

1921 John Larson invents the modern polygraph 0 cit. Police officer and physiologist John Larson built the first modern polygraph, a device recording blood pressure, pulse, and respiration to detect deception. The device was adopted by police departments despite the lack of scientific consensus that its readings reliably indicate lying. Courts have generally excluded polygraph results as evidence, and no major scientific body has validated it as an accurate lie-detection method. science ●●

c. 1921 The Shinkolobwe uranium mine opens 0 cit. Union Minière began working the Shinkolobwe deposit in Katanga, which held some of the richest uranium ore ever found. At first the mine was valued mainly for its radium. The site's uranium would soon take on strategic importance far beyond mining. economy / science ●●

c. 1921 Shinkolobwe uranium enriches the world radium trade 0 cit. After the discovery of the Shinkolobwe deposit around 1915, Union Miniere began producing radium from its unusually rich uranium ore in the early 1920s. For years the Congo mine dominated the world radium market, a valuable and dangerous trade run entirely for Belgian and shareholder profit. The same ore body would soon matter far more for a new reason, its uranium content. economy / science / technology ●●

1922 Harry Laughlin drafts the Model Eugenical Sterilization Law 0 cit. Eugenicist Harry Laughlin published a Model Eugenical Sterilization Law in 1922 that many US states adopted and that later influenced Nazi legislation. It gave the movement a legal template for forcibly sterilizing people judged unfit. politics / science ●●●

1922 Malinowski publishes Argonauts of the Western Pacific 0 cit. Bronislaw Malinowski, based at the LSE, published Argonauts of the Western Pacific, drawn from his long fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands. The book argued for close firsthand study of a living society and helped establish modern social anthropology. It set the method that the School would teach for a generation. science / society ●●

c. 1923 Oberth's The Rocket into Interplanetary Space 0 cit. Hermann Oberth published a book arguing that rockets could carry people into space. It inspired a generation of German rocket enthusiasts, including Wernher von Braun. science / technology ●●●

1923 Frye v. United States sets the general acceptance standard for scientific evidence 0 cit. A federal appeals court ruled that a precursor to the polygraph, a systolic blood pressure deception test, could not be admitted as evidence because the underlying technique had not gained general acceptance in the relevant scientific community. The resulting Frye standard governed the admissibility of scientific evidence, including many forensic disciplines, in most U.S. courts for the next seventy years. It was eventually superseded in federal courts by the Daubert standard. politics / science ●●●

20 March 1924 Virginia's Eugenical Sterilization Act 0 cit. Virginia's General Assembly passed the Eugenical Sterilization Act, authorizing compulsory sterilization of patients at state institutions found to be "feebleminded" or otherwise hereditarily unfit. It was passed the same day as the state's Racial Integrity Act, which banned interracial marriage. The law's authors intended to create a test case that could withstand constitutional challenge, and chose a young patient named Carrie Buck for that purpose. politics / science / society ●●●

4 June 1924 Carrie Buck Committed to the Virginia Colony 0 cit. Carrie Buck, an eighteen-year-old woman who had been raped by a relative of her foster family and borne a child, was committed to the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded. Colony officials labeled her, her mother Emma, and her infant daughter Vivian as "feebleminded" across three generations, and superintendent Albert Priddy selected Carrie's case to test Virginia's new sterilization law. science / society ●●

1 July 1924 FBI establishes a centralized fingerprint Identification Division 0 cit. The FBI, under J. Edgar Hoover, created an Identification Division to consolidate fingerprint records from police departments nationwide into a single federal repository. The division absorbed existing collections and grew into the largest fingerprint archive in the world. It gave American law enforcement a national system for identifying repeat offenders across jurisdictions. politics / science ●●

17 June 1925 Geneva Protocol 0 cit. Protocol prohibiting the use of chemical and biological weapons in war, drawn up after the gas warfare of the First World War. It banned use but not production or stockpiling. diplomacy / science / war ●●●

10 July 1925 The Scopes trial over teaching evolution 0 cit. Teacher John Scopes was tried for teaching evolution in violation of a Tennessee law. The trial drew national attention to the clash between religion and science in public schools. religion / science ●●●

July 1925 The Scopes trial tests teaching evolution 0 cit. In 1925 teacher John Scopes was tried for teaching evolution in violation of a Tennessee law. The trial became a national symbol of the fight over religion, science, and what schools may teach. religion / science ●●●

c. 1925 Quantum mechanics remakes the rules of matter 0 cit. In the mid-1920s Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Born, Dirac, and others built quantum mechanics, in which particles behave as probabilities rather than certainties. It was the work of many hands over a few intense years, not a single breakthrough. Its predictions are astonishingly accurate, yet physicists still argue about what it really means. science ●●●

1926 American Eugenics Society is founded 0 cit. The society promoted eugenics through public campaigns, including "Fitter Families" contests that ranked people like livestock. Its work lent respectability to sterilization laws and prejudice against immigrants and the poor. science / society ●●

16 March 1926 Goddard launches the first liquid-fuel rocket 0 cit. Robert Goddard flew the world's first liquid-propellant rocket, which rose about 12 meters in a short flight. The design principle became the basis of modern rocketry. science / technology ●●●●●

1926 American Eugenics Society founded 0 cit. The American Eugenics Society was founded in 1926 to popularize eugenic ideas through exhibits, contests, and lobbying. It reflected a broad elite consensus in the era that reproduction of the unfit should be discouraged. science / society ●●●

5 July 1927 Founding of the German rocket society 0 cit. Amateur enthusiasts formed the Verein fuer Raumschiffahrt, or Society for Space Travel, to build and test rockets. Its members included a young Wernher von Braun before the group was absorbed into military work. science / society / technology ●●●

2 May 1927 Buck v. Bell upholds compulsory sterilization 0 cit. The US Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 in Buck v. Bell that states could forcibly sterilize people deemed unfit, with Justice Holmes writing that three generations of imbeciles are enough. The decision gave legal cover to tens of thousands of coerced sterilizations and has never been formally overturned. politics / science ●●●●●

19 October 1927 Carrie Buck Sterilized unproven 0 cit. Carrie Buck was surgically sterilized at the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, becoming the first person sterilized under the law upheld in Buck v. Bell. Later research found no evidence that Carrie, her mother, or her daughter Vivian, who died young and did well in school, were actually "feebleminded." Historians regard the case as built on fabricated evidence to secure a favorable precedent. science / society ●●

c. 1927 Calvin Goddard's comparison microscope used in the Sacco and Vanzetti case 0 cit. Firearms examiner Calvin Goddard used a comparison microscope, which lets an examiner view two bullets side by side, to re-examine ballistics evidence in the contested murder case against Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. The technique demonstrated that microscopic markings on bullets could be matched to a specific firearm. The case helped establish the comparison microscope as a standard tool of firearms identification. science ●●

1927 Malinowski takes the first chair of social anthropology 0 cit. Malinowski was appointed to the first Chair of Social Anthropology in the University of London, based at the LSE. From this post he led the School's rise as the leading centre of the subject in Britain. His functionalist approach studied how the customs of a society worked together to meet human needs. science / society ●●

September 1928 Discovery of penicillin 0 cit. Alexander Fleming notices that a stray mold kills bacteria in his laboratory at St Mary's Hospital. Penicillin becomes the first antibiotic, and the drugs that follow save hundreds of millions of lives. science ●●●●

c. 1 January 1928 Human Betterment Foundation Founded in Pasadena 0 cit. Businessman E.S. Gosney and psychologist Paul Popenoe founded the Human Betterment Foundation to study and promote California's sterilization program, which had already sterilized thousands of institutionalized people. The foundation's 1929 book "Sterilization for Human Betterment" was widely circulated and later cited approvingly by Nazi eugenicists as evidence that mass sterilization could work in practice. science / society ●●

c. 1929 Calvin Goddard's ballistics analysis identifies the St. Valentine's Day Massacre weapons 0 cit. Following the February 1929 machine-gun killing of seven men in a Chicago garage, Calvin Goddard used firearms comparison to match spent shell casings to specific Thompson submachine guns later recovered from a suspect in Michigan. The analysis was widely publicized and demonstrated firearms identification as courtroom-credible science. Goddard went on to found the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory at Northwestern University, one of the first university-based crime labs in the United States. science ●●●

1929 Lemaitre and Hubble find an expanding universe 0 cit. Edwin Hubble's measurements showed that distant galaxies are rushing away from us, so the universe is expanding. The Belgian priest Georges Lemaitre had derived the expansion and proposed a primeval atom two years earlier, an idea that grew into the Big Bang. The name Big Bang was actually coined later by a skeptic, Fred Hoyle, as a jab. science ●●●

1929 Lionel Robbins takes the chair of economics 0 cit. Lionel Robbins became professor of economics at the LSE in 1929, at the age of thirty. He built the department into a leading centre of economic theory and gathered around him a strong group of scholars. Robbins favoured free markets and became a key figure in the School's economics wars of the following decade. economy / science ●●

c. 1930 Malinowski's seminar trains a generation 0 cit. Malinowski's weekly seminar at the LSE drew students from Britain, the colonies and abroad, and trained many of the anthropologists who would lead the field. Figures such as Raymond Firth and Edmund Leach passed through it. The seminar spread the School's fieldwork method across the world. science / society ●●

c. 1930 Anthropology and the colonial state 0 cit. Much LSE anthropology was carried out in territories under British rule, and some of it was funded by bodies tied to colonial administration. Scholars such as Talal Asad have argued that the discipline was entangled with empire, producing knowledge that could help govern colonised peoples even when researchers did not intend it. This link is a matter of ongoing scholarly debate rather than settled fact. politics / science ●●