1908 in science

Archaeology

• A 40,000-year-old Neanderthal boy skeleton is found at Le Moustier in southwest France by Otto Hauser.

  Astronomy

• If its start and end are defined using mean solar time then due to the extreme length of day variation this is the longest year of the Julian calendar or Gregorian calendar, having a duration of 31622401.38 seconds of Terrestrial Time.
• – Tunguska event in Siberia, an explosion believed to have been caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment at an altitude of above the Earth's surface.

  Chemistry

• Kikunae Ikeda discovers monosodium glutamate, the chemical behind the taste of umami.
• Heike Kamerlingh Onnes liquefies helium.

  Genetics

• G. H. Hardy and Wilhelm Weinberg independently formulate the Hardy–Weinberg principle which states that both allele and genotype frequencies in a population remain in equilibrium unless disturbed. proposes that genetic defects cause many inherited diseases.

  History of science

• Site of Ulugh Beg Observatory located in Samarkand by Russian archaeologist V. L. Vyatkin.
• National Technical Museum founded.

  Mathematics

• Ernst Zermelo axiomizes set theory, thus avoiding Cantor's contradictions.
• Josip Plemelj solves the Riemann problem about the existence of a differential equation with a given monodromic group and uses Sokhotsky-Plemelj formulae.
• Student's t-distribution published by William Sealy Gosset.

  Paleontology

• Edmontosaurus mummy AMNH 5060, an exceptionally well-preserved fossil dinosaur, is discovered near Lusk, Wyoming.

  Physics

• Hans Geiger and Ernest Rutherford invent the Geiger counter.
• Gustav Mie publishes the Mie solution to Maxwell's equations on the scattering of electromagnetic radiation by a sphere.

  Physiology and medicine

• April 27 – First Congress for Freudian Psychology, held in Salzburg.
• Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler introduces the term schizophrenia.
• Austrian American pathologist Leo Buerger gives the first accurate pathological description of Thromboangiitis obliterans at Mount Sinai Hospital.
• Victor Horsley and R. Clarke invents the stereotactic method.
• Margaret Reed Lewis, working in Berlin, becomes probably the first person successfully to grow mammalian tissue in vitro.

  Technology

• January 12 – A long-distance radio message is sent from the Eiffel Tower for the first time.
• Henry Ford develops the assembly line method of automobile manufacturing and produces the first Model T automobile.

  Awards

• Nobel Prizes
• * Physics – Gabriel Lippmann
• * Chemistry – Ernest Rutherford
• * Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine – Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov and Paul Ehrlich

  Births

• January 15 – Edward Teller, Hungarian-born physicist, inventor of the hydrogen bomb.
• January 18 – Jacob Bronowski, Polish-born scientific polymath.
• January 22 – Lev Davidovich Landau, Russian physicist.
• February 11 – Vivian Fuchs, English geologist and explorer.
• February 25 – Mary Locke Petermann, American cellular biochemist.
• March 15 – Thure von Uexküll, German pioneer of psychosomatic medicine.
• May 14 – Nicholas Kurti, born Kürti Miklós, Hungarian-born physicist.
• May 23 – John Bardeen, American physicist, co-inventor of the transistor, only physicist to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics twice.
• September 2 – Nikolai Aleksandrovich Kozyrev, Russian astronomer and astrophysicist.
• September 6 – Louis Essen, English physicist, co-developer of the first practical atomic clock.
• September 18 – Victor Ambartsumian, Soviet Armenian theoretical astrophysicist.
• October 10 – Min Chueh Chang, Chinese-born embryologist.
• October 21 – Elsie Widdowson, English nutritionist.
• November 4 – Józef Rotblat, Polish-born physicist.
• December 24 – Noël Poynter, English medical historian.

  Deaths

• January 3 – Charles Augustus Young, American astronomer.
• August 25 – Henri Becquerel, French physicist.
• November 20 – Georgy Voronoy, Russian mathematician.