1936 in science

Chemistry

• February 4 – Radium E becomes the first radioactive element to be made synthetically.
• December 23 – The first nerve agent, Tabun, is discovered by a research team headed by Dr Gerhard Schrader of IG Farben in Germany.

  Computer science

• May 28 – Alan Turing's paper "On Computable Numbers" is received by the London Mathematical Society for publication, introducing the concept of the theoretical "a-machine" or Turing machine. Its formal publication is on November 12.
• Rózsa Péter presents a paper entitled "Über rekursive Funktionen der zweite Stufe" to the International Congress of Mathematicians in Oslo, helping to found the modern field of recursive function theory.

  Earth sciences

• Inge Lehmann argues that the Earth's molten interior has a solid inner core.

  History of science and technology

• Economist John Maynard Keynes buys a trunk of Isaac Newton's papers at auction.

  Mathematics

• March – Alonzo Church's "A Note on the Entscheidungsproblem" is published.
• Dutch mathematician Cornelis Simon Meijer introduces the Meijer G-function.

  Physiology and medicine

• July 4 – First publication recognizing stress as a biological condition.
• António Egas Moniz publishes his first report of performing a prefrontal leukotomy on a human patient.
• Guido Fanconi describes a connection between celiac disease, cystic fibrosis of the pancreas and bronchiectasis.
• Harry Himsworth distinguishes the two principal types of diabetes.

  Psychology

• Sherif's experiment on conformity.

  Technology

• June 26 – Focke-Wulf Fw 61, the first fully controllable helicopter, makes its first flight.
• November 2 – The world's first regular daily high-definition television broadcast service is begun by the British Broadcasting Corporation from Alexandra Palace in London. The service initially alternates on a weekly basis between John Logie Baird's 240-line electromechanical system and the Marconi-EMI all-electronic 405-line television system.

  Zoology

• September 7 – Death of the last recorded thylacine, in Hobart Zoo.
• November 9 – American explorer Ruth Harkness encounters and captures in China a live giant panda, a cub named Su Lin, the first to enter the United States.

  Awards

• Fields Prize in Mathematics : Lars Ahlfors and Jesse Douglas
• Nobel Prizes
• * Physics – Victor Franz Hess, Carl David Anderson
• * Chemistry – Peter Debye
• * Medicine – Sir Henry Hallett Dale, Otto Loewi

  Births

• January 8 – Robert May, Australian-born Government Chief Scientific Adviser .
• January 10
• * Walter Bodmer, German-born British human geneticist.
• * Robert Wilson, American physicist and radio astronomer.
• January 27 – Barry Barish, American gravitational physicist, Nobel Prize winner.
• March 16 – Raymond Vahan Damadian, Armenian-American MRI practitioner
• March 24 – David Suzuki, Canadian geneticist and populariser of science.
• April 17 – Meemann Chang, Chinese paleontologist.
• June 29 – Leon O. Chua, American electrical engineer and computer scientist
• August 1 – W. D. Hamilton, English evolutionary biologist, widely recognised as one of the greatest evolutionary theorists of the 20th century.
• August 17 – Margaret Hamilton, American computer scientist, Presidential Medal of Freedom laureate.
• September 17 – Gerald Guralnik, American physicist most famous for his co-discovery of the Higgs mechanism and Higgs boson.
• November 25 – John Taylor, English inventor.
• December 22 – James Burke, British historian and populariser of science.
• December 31 – Szilveszter E. Vizi, Hungarian physician, neuroscientist and pharmacologist

  Deaths

• February 27 – Ivan Pavlov, Russian physiologist.
• April 8 – Róbert Bárány, Austro-Hungarian-born otologist, Nobel Prize winner in medicine.
• April 9 – John Uri Lloyd, American pharmacist and science fiction author.
• April 27 – Karl Pearson, English mathematician.
• August 25 – Maria von Linden, German bacteriologist and zoologist.