1916 in science

Astronomy

• Barnard's Star is discovered by Edward Emerson Barnard.
• Harlow Shapley finds that the spectrum of S Sagittae and other Cepheid variables varies with brightness, recording it as spectral type F0 leading to maximum, F4 at maximum, and G3 just before minimum brightness.

Chemistry

• Gilbert N. Lewis and Irving Langmuir formulate an electron shell model of chemical bonding.
• The Born–Haber cycle, an approach to analyze reaction energies, is developed by German scientists Max Born and Fritz Haber.
• Sydney Chapman and David Enskog systematically develop a kinetic theory of gases.
• Jan Czochralski invents a method for growing single crystals of metals.

Mathematics

• Ludwig Bieberbach presents the Bieberbach conjecture.
• Wacław Sierpiński gives the first example of an absolutely normal number and describes the Sierpinski carpet.

Medicine

• 1 January – The British Royal Army Medical Corps carries out the first successful blood transfusion using blood that had been stored and cooled.
• 16 October – Margaret Sanger opens a family planning and birth control clinic in Brownsville, Brooklyn, the first of its kind in the United States. Nine days later, she is arrested for breaking a New York state law prohibiting distribution of contraceptives. This same year, she publishes What Every Girl Should Know, providing information about such topics as menstruation and sexuality in adolescents.
• Georges Guillain, Jean Alexandre Barré and André Strohl diagnose two soldiers with Guillain–Barré syndrome of the peripheral nervous system and describe the key diagnostic abnormality of increased spinal fluid protein production, but normal cell count.
• Eugen Bleuler publishes his Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie, including a definition of complexes arising from diffuse brain damage, known as "Bleuler's psycho syndrome".
• Medication Suramin against African sleeping sickness and river blindness is first made by German company Bayer AG.

Physics

• Albert Einstein publishes "" on general relativity in Annalen der Physik 49 and shows that the field equations of general relativity admit wavelike solutions. This will be demonstrated in 2016.
• Karl Schwarzschild solves the Einstein vacuum field equations for uncharged spherically symmetric non-rotating systems and calculates Schwarzschild radius.

Psychology

• Lewis M. Terman of Stanford University develops the first of the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Scales for intelligence testing.

Technology

• February – Stahlhelm steel helmet first issued to German soldiers.
• 18 April – Capt. Peter Nissen completes the prototype Nissen hut.
• 11 September – The almost-completed Quebec Bridge collapses for the second time.

Events

• Chemist Chika Kuroda becomes the first woman in Japan to receive a Bachelor of Science degree.

Births

• 9 January – Peter Twinn, mathematician and World War II code-breaker
• 10 January – Sune K. Bergström, Swedish biochemist, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• 25 January – John R. F. Jeffreys, British mathematician and cryptanalyst.
• 4 March – Hans Eysenck, German-born psychologist.
• 26 March – Christian B. Anfinsen, American biochemist, winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
• 14 April – Lawrence Hogben, New Zealand meteorologist.
• 22 April – Ruth A. M. Schmidt, American geologist.
• 30 April – Claude Shannon, American mathematician, "father of information theory".
• 6 May – Robert H. Dicke, American physicist.
• 4 June – Robert F. Furchgott, American biochemist, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• 8 June – Francis Crick, English-born molecular biologist, co-discoverer of the nucleic acid double helix structure in 1953, winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• 11 June – Alexander Prokhorov, Australian-born Soviet Russian physicist.
• 15 June – Herbert A. Simon, American polymath, winner of the 1978 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
• 1 July – Iosif Shklovsky, Ukrainian astrophysicist.
• 11 July – Kitty Joyner, American electrical engineer.
• 25 August – Frederick Chapman Robbins, American pediatrician and virologist, winner of the 1954 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• 30 September – Richard K. Guy, English mathematician.
• 3 October – Frank Pantridge, Northern Ireland cardiologist.
• 4 October – Vitaly Ginzburg, Soviet Russian theoretical physicist, astrophysicist, one of the fathers of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physics, member of the Soviet and Russian Academies of Sciences.
• 19 October – Jean Dausset, French immunologist, winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• 16 November – Christopher Strachey, English computer scientist.
• 9 December – Esther Wilkins, pioneer of dental hygiene.
• 15 December – Maurice Wilkins, New Zealand-born English molecular biologist, co-discoverer of the nucleic acid double helix structure in 1953 using X-ray diffraction, winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• 27 December – John Duckworth, British physicist.

Deaths

• 12 February – Richard Dedekind, German mathematician.
• 19 February – Ernst Mach, Austrian-born physicist.
• 11 May
• * Karl Schwarzschild, German astronomer and physicist.
• * Nadezhda Ziber-Shumova, Russian biochemist.
• 15 July – Élie Metchnikoff, Russian zoologist and immunologist, winner of the 1908 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
• 23 July – Sir William Ramsay, Scottish-born chemist, winner of the 1904 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
• September – Anton Köllisch, German chemist noted for synthesising MDMA
• 14 September – Pierre Duhem, French philosopher of science.
• 29 September – Albert John Cook, American entomologist and zoologist.
• 10 November – Walter Sutton, American geneticist and surgeon.
• 12 November – Percival Lowell, American astronomer.
• 24 November – Hiram Maxim, American inventor of the machine gun.
• 31 December – Alice Ball, African-American chemist.