Chemistry
- Radiocarbon dating technique discovered by Willard Libby and his colleagues at the University of Chicago — work for which Libby will receive the Nobel prize in 1960.
- A group including Dorothy Hodgkin publish the three-dimensional molecular structure of penicillin, demonstrating that it contains a β-lactam ring.
Read more about this topic: 1949 In Science
Famous quotes containing the word chemistry:
“If thought makes free, so does the moral sentiment. The mixtures of spiritual chemistry refuse to be analyzed.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“For me chemistry represented an indefinite cloud of future potentialities which enveloped my life to come in black volutes torn by fiery flashes, like those which had hidden Mount Sinai. Like Moses, from that cloud I expected my law, the principle of order in me, around me, and in the world.... I would watch the buds swell in spring, the mica glint in the granite, my own hands, and I would say to myself: “I will understand this, too, I will understand everything.””
—Primo Levi (1919–1987)