The 1920s Science and Technology: Headline Makers

Arthur Holly Compton (1892–1962) While researching the nature of matter during the early 1920s, physicist Arthur Holly Compton discovered what came to be known as the Compton effect: When an X ray strikes an electron, it bounces off at an angle to its original trajectory and loses energy in the process. He published his findings in 1923 and was awarded a share of the 1927 Nobel Prize in physics. The following year, Compton coined the word photon (a significant packet of radiant energy or light). During World War II, he worked on the Manhattan project to develop the atomic bomb.

Edwin P. Hubble (1889–1953) In 1923, Edwin P. Hubble aimed the powerful 100-inch telescope located at the Mount Wilson Observatory in Pasadena, California, in the direction of the Andromeda nebulae. He believed Andromeda was not merely a gas cloud or a fuzzy single star but rather a collection of stars that were a million light years away from Earth. Building on the work of Vesto Slipher (1875–1969), Hubble next began to examine the different galaxies. His calculations that they constantly are moving away from each other paved the way for the Big Bang theory, the most widely accepted scientific explanation for the origin of the universe.

Charles A. Lindbergh (1902–1974) On May 20 and 21, 1927, Charles A. Lindbergh stunned the world by flying solo from New York to Paris. His accomplishment won him instant celebrity, and deeply affected the development of aviation. It proved the possibility of building safe planes capable of flying long distances, and led to the creation of commercial airlines and specialized military aircraft. Lindbergh eventually became a tragic and controversial figure. The kidnapping and murder of his infant son in 1932 shocked the nation, and the crime resulted in passage of a federal kidnapping law (commonly known as the Lindbergh Act). He was soundly criticized by many of his fellow Americans for the pro-German isolationist stance he took before World War II (1939–45).

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) Margaret Mead was perhaps the twentieth century's foremost cultural anthropologist. Between November 1925 and June 1926, she lived in the Samoan Islands, where she studied the native language and interviewed about fifty Samoan adolescent females. Upon noting the differences between them and their American counterparts, she concluded that culture, rather than biology, has the greater impact on individual personality. Mead published her findings in her classic study, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), which was hailed as a breakthrough with regard to the importance of nurturing, or upbringing, in individual development. It became a best-seller.

Albert A. Michelson (1852–1931) Albert A. Michelson, a longtime professor at the University of Chicago, spent his summers at the California Institute of Technology and the nearby Mount Wilson Observatory. Using the 100-inch telescope at the observatory, he attempted to measure the diameter of a star. He selected Betelgeuse (pronounced BEETLE-juice), the largest star in the constellation Orion, and he employed trigonometry to calculate its diameter as 386 million kilometers (240 million miles). In December 1920, it was announced that Michelson was the first to measure the size of a star other than the Sun.

Robert A. Millikan (1868–1953) In 1923, Robert A. Millikan won the Nobel Prize in physics for charting the course of water and oil droplets flying through the air. It was a study he had undertaken in an attempt to find the absolute charge of the electron, and he had completed this work in 1917. Millikan spent the 1920s exploring the nature and origin of radioactivity. In mid-decade, he proved that radioactivity originated in outer space, rather than on Earth. He dubbed these emissions cosmic rays and continued to investigate this mysterious energy.

Igor Sikorsky (1889–1972) Russian emigré Igor Sikorsky was one of the decade's great American aircraft designers. In 1913, Sikorsky built and flew the first multimotored airplane. In 1920, he formed a partnership to manufacture large airplanes capable of carrying freight or passengers. Three years later, the company became the Sikorsky Aero Engineering Company. Sikorsky successfully tested the two-engine, fourteen-passenger S-29-A. Then he began building the S-37, which he sold to American Airways International. In 1929, the S-37 flew 7,000 miles, from San Francisco to Santiago, Chile. Other Sikorsky innovations included a twin-engine amphibian plane and the first operable helicopters.