1909 in science
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1909 in science and technology

See also: 1908 in science, other events of 1909, 1910 in science and the list of years in science.

Archeaology

• 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 to broadcast as a ham radio operator.
• Louis Bleriot is the first man to fly across the English Channel in a heavier-than-air craft.

Nobel Prizes

• Guglielmo Marconi and Carl Ferdinand Braun are awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics
• Wilhelm Ostwald is awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry
• Emil Theodor Kocher is awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine

Births

• January 5 - Stephen Cole Kleene, future mathematician
• April 13 - Stanislaw Marcin Ulam, future mathematician
• May 7 - Edwin H. Land, future inventor and founder of Polaroid
• November 24 - Gerhard Gentzen, future mathematician
• Giulio Racah, future mathematician and physicist

Deaths

• January 12 - Hermann Minkowski, mathematician
• July 11 - Simon Newcomb, astronomer
• August 27 - Emil Christian Hansen, fermentation physiologist

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