1959 in science

List of years in science (Table)
… 1949 • 1950 • 1951 • 1952 • 1953 • 1954 • 1955 • 1956 • 1957 • 1958 – 1959 – 1960 • 1961 • 1962 • 1963 • 1964 • 1965 • 1966 • 1967 • 1968 • 1969 …
Related time period or subjects
… 1956 • 1957 • 1958 – 1959 – 1960 • 1961 • 1962 … … 1920s • 1930s • 1940s – 1950s – 1960s • 1970s • 1980s … … 19th century – 20th century – 21st century …
Art Archaeology Architecture Literature Music Science more

The year 1959 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

[edit] Astronomy and space exploration

August 7 - The United States launches Explorer 6 from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
September 15 - Russian probe Luna 2 sends back first photos of the far side of Earth's Moon.
September 19 - Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison publish in Nature their seminal paper Searching for Interstellar Communications, establishing the scientific rationale for SETI.
Physicist Freeman Dyson first proposes the hypothetical Dyson sphere.
Little Joe 2, a mission in the Mercury program, carried Sam the monkey into space.

January 1 - Cultivars of plants named after this date must be named in a modern language, not in Latin.
July - The medical research group studying Minamata disease comes to the conclusion that mercury is the cause. [1]