The year 1941 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Biology

• George Wells Beadle and Edward Lawrie Tatum publish "Genetic Control of Biochemical Reactions in Neurospora" which showed that specific genes code for specific proteins.

Chemistry

• Chemical element 94, plutonium, first synthesized by Glenn T. Seaborg, Arthur C. Wahl, Joseph W. Kennedy, Emilio Segrè. Is kept secret until after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as it is being developed for the first atomic bombs.

Computer science

• John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford E. Berry developed the Atanasoff?Berry Computer.

Physics

• Ives and Stilwell prove that ions radiate at frequencies affected by their motion.

Births

• March 26 - Richard Dawkins, British scientist.
• September 9 - Dennis Ritchie, computer scientist.
• September 10 - Stephen Jay Gould (d. 2002), paleontologist/evolutionist.

Deaths

• July 11 - Arthur Evans (b. 1851), archaeologist.
• July 26 - Henri Lebesgue (b. 1875), mathematician.

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