1916

Nobel Prize in Literature

Verner von Heidenstam

The Swedish poet and novelist received the prize as a leading voice of a new romantic nationalism in Swedish letters. His epic verse and historical novels had given Swedes a particular sense of themselves. The other prizes — Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Peace — were reserved that year, the war having made the committee reluctant.

Schwarzschild solves Einstein's field equations

Karl Schwarzschild was serving in the German army on the Russian front when he read Einstein's November 1915 papers and, within weeks, found the first exact solution: a description of the spacetime around any spherically symmetric mass. He sent the result to Einstein, who presented it to the Prussian Academy in January 1916. Schwarzschild died of illness at the front four months later. His solution defines what is now called the Schwarzschild radius — the boundary below which a mass becomes a black hole.

Lewis and Langmuir develop electron-shell model of bonding

Gilbert Lewis had been developing the idea that chemical bonds form when two atoms share electrons since before the war; Irving Langmuir extended and systematised the model into a theory of electron shells and valence. The shared electron pair at the heart of a covalent bond remains the concept every chemistry student encounters first.

Shapley finds spectral variations in Cepheid variables

Harlow Shapley documented that Cepheid variable stars' spectra shift as they pulse, confirming their brightness oscillates with their physical expansion and contraction rather than through some eclipse or other geometric effect. This cemented the period-luminosity relationship as a reliable distance tool.

First successful transfusion of stored blood

On 1 January, the Royal Army Medical Corps performed a blood transfusion using blood that had been collected, refrigerated, and stored — rather than transferred directly from donor to recipient. It was a modest-sounding logistical shift that would, over the next few decades, make blood banking possible.

Discovery of Barnard's Star

Edward Emerson Barnard identified a dim red dwarf with the fastest apparent motion across the sky of any known star — moving the width of a full moon every 180 years. At roughly six light-years distant, it is the second-nearest star system to Earth. Its speed across the sky reflects how close it actually is.