1937 in science

Astronomy

• June 8 – First total solar eclipse to exceed 7 minutes of totality in over 800 years; visible in the Pacific and Peru.

Biology

• September 27 – Last definite record of a Bali tiger shot.
• Meredith Crawford first publishes results of the cooperative pulling paradigm, with chimpanzees in the United States.
• Jay Laurence Lush publishes the influential textbook Animal Breeding Plans in the United States.
• The citric acid cycle is finally identified by Hans Adolf Krebs.

Chemistry

• Carlo Perrier and Emilio Segrè at the University of Palermo confirm discovery of the chemical element which will become known as Technetium.
• The opioid Methadone is synthesized in Germany by scientists working at Hoechst AG.
• Otto Bayer and his coworkers at IG Farben in Leverkusen, Germany, first make polyurethanes.

Computer science

• January – Alan Turing's 1936 paper "On Computable Numbers" first appears in print. Alonzo Church's review of it in Journal of Symbolic Logic introduces the term Turing machine.
• Claude Shannon's Master's thesis at MIT demonstrates that electronic application of Boolean algebra could construct and resolve any logical numerical relationship.
• Konrad Zuse submits patents in Germany based on his Z1 computer design anticipating von Neumann architecture.

Exploration

• British Graham Land Expedition concludes its work, having determined that Graham Land is an integral part of the Antarctic Peninsula and not an independent archipelago.

Mathematics

• Bruno de Finetti publishes "La Prévision: ses lois logiques, ses sources subjectives" in Annales de l'Institut Henri Poincaré, his most influential treatment of his theorem on exchangeable sequences of random variables.
• Hans Freudenthal proves the Freudenthal suspension theorem in homotopy.
• Goldberg polyhedron first described.

Medicine

• November 2 – English chemist Montague Phillips at May & Baker synthesises sulphapyridine, an early antibiotic which immediately enters animal trials with Middlesex Hospital pathologist Lionel Whitby.
• First typhus vaccine by Rudolf Weigl, Ludwik Fleck and Hans Zinsser; influenza vaccine by Anatol Smorodintsev.
• Both respirator designed in Australia.
• Italian psychiatrist Amarro Fiamberti is the first to document a transorbital approach to the brain, which becomes the basis for the controversial medical procedure of transorbital lobotomy.
• Publication in the United Kingdom of Dr A. J. Cronin's novel The Citadel, promoting the cause of socialised medicine.

Physics

• January – Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen publish a paper denying that gravitational waves can exist.
• Eugene Wigner introduces the term isospin.

Technology

• February – Hans von Ohain begins ground-testing a turbojet engine.
• April 12 – Frank Whittle ground-tests the first jet engine designed to power an aircraft, at Rugby, England.
• May 28 – Rocker Shovel Loader patent applied for in the United States.
• June 5 – Alan Blumlein is granted a patent for an ultra-linear amplifier.
• December 13 – Tomlinson Moseley files the first patent for an electric toothbrush.
• Alec Reeves invents pulse-code modulation.

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
• * Physics – Clinton Joseph Davisson, George Paget Thomson
• * Chemistry – Walter Haworth, Paul Karrer
• * Medicine – Albert von Szent-Györgyi Nagyrapolt
• Copley Medal – Henry Dale
• Wollaston Medal for geology – Waldemar Lindgren

Births

• January 14 – Leo Kadanoff, American physicist.
• January 26 – Igor Aleksander, Croatian computer scientist.
• February 18 – Chen Chuangtian, Chinese materials scientist.
• March 16 – Amos Tversky, Jewish American cognitive and mathematical psychologist, recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
• April 17 – Don Buchla, American electronic engineer, pioneer of sound synthesizers.
• May 9 – Alison Jolly, American primatologist.
• May 13 – Trevor Baylis, English inventor.
• June 4 – Richard Robson, English-born Australian chemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
• June 8 – Bruce McCandless II, American astronaut.
• June 9 – Harald Rosenthal, German biologist
• June 11 – David Mumford, American mathematician.
• June 21 – Averil Mansfield, English vascular surgeon.
• June 23 – Nicholas Shackleton, English Quaternary geologist and paleoclimatologist, recipient of the Vetlesen Prize.
• June 26 – Robert Coleman Richardson, American experimental physicist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
• July 1 – Lydia Makhubu, Swazi chemist.
• July 18 – Roald Hoffmann, né Safran, Polish-American theoretical chemist, poet and playwright, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
• July 19 – Bibb Latané, American social psychologist.
• July 26 – Ernest Vinberg, Russian mathematician.
• August 2 – Coenraad Bron, Dutch computer scientist.
• September 8 – Edna Adan Ismail, Somali pioneer of pediatrics.
• December 26 – John Horton Conway, English-b4orn m4athematician.

Deaths

• January 28 – Arthur Pollen, English inventor.
• January 29 – Aleen Cust, Irish veterinary surgeon.
• February 5 – Lou Andreas-Salomé, German psychoanalyst.
• May 28 – Alfred Adler, Austrian psychotherapist.
• June 11 – R. J. Mitchell, English aeronautical engineer.
• July 20 – Guglielmo Marconi, Italian inventor.
• July 30 – Victor Despeignes, French pioneer of radiation oncology.
• October 16 – William Sealy Gosset, English statistician.
• October 19 – Ernest Rutherford, New Zealand-born British physicist and laureate of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
• November 23 – Jagadish Chandra Bose, Bengali physicist.