The year 1912 in science and technology.

Biology

• Horace Donisthorpe first discovers Anergates atratulus in the New Forest, England on July 23rd.

Chemistry

• Peter Debye derives the T-cubed law for the low temperature heat capacity of a nonmetallic solid

Exploration

• March 7 - Roald Amundsen announces discovery of the South Pole.

Geology

• Alfred Wegener proposes the theory of continental drift.

Medicine

• Kazimierz Funk identifies vitamins.

Physics

• Victor Hess discovers that the ionization of air increases with altitude, indicating the existence of cosmic radiation.
• Max von Laue suggests using lattice solids to diffract X-rays
• Walter Friedrich and Paul Knipping diffract X-rays in zinc blende

Awards

• Nobel Prize
  • Physics - Nils Gustaf Dalén
  • Chemistry - not awarded
  • Medicine - Alexis Carrel

Births

• March 23 - Wernher von Braun (d. 1977), physicist and engineer.
• April 19 - Glenn T. Seaborg (d. 1999), physical chemist, Nobel laurette in Chemistry
• May 30 - Julius Axelrod (d. 2004), biochemist, Nobel Laureate in Physiology.
• September 7 - David Packard (d. 1996), engineer.

Deaths:

• February 10 - Joseph Lister (b. 1827), British inventor of antiseptic.
• February 12 - Osborne Reynolds (b. 1842), physicist.
• March 29 - Robert Falcon Scott (b. 1868), explorer.
• August 7 - François-Alphonse Forel (b. 1841), pioneer in the study of lakes.