1960 in science

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The year 1960 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Contents 1 Astronomy and space exploration 2 Biology 3 Computer science 4 Exploration 5 Mathematics 6 Medicine 7 Meteorology 8 Paleontology 9 Physics 10 Technology 11 Births 12 Deaths 13 References

Astronomy and space exploration

• March 14 - Jodrell Bank Observatory in England makes radio contact with the U.S. Pioneer 5 probe over a distance of 407,000 miles (655,000 km).^[1]
• April–July - Cornell University astronomer Frank Drake begins searching for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence with Project Ozma at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank, West Virginia.
• April 13 - The United States launches navigation satellite Transit I-b.
• May 15 - Sputnik program: The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 4 into Earth orbit.
• June 3 - British-born American theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson proposes the idea of Dyson spheres.^[2]
• August 12 - First experimental Project Echo passive communications satellite goes into orbit.^[3]
• August 19 - Sputnik program: The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 5 with the dogs Belka and Strelka, forty mice, two rats and a variety of plants. The spacecraft will return to earth the next day and all animals will be recovered safely.
• Dutch mathematician Hans Freudenthal invents the artificial language Lincos, intended for communication with extraterrestrial intelligence.

Biology

• February 13
  • Max Perutz publishes the structure of hemoglobin.^[4].
  • John Kendrew publishes the structure of myoglobin.^[5]
• July - Robert Burns Woodward publishes a total synthesis of chlorophyl.^[6]
• Jacques Ruffié invents hemotyping.
• Juan Oro finds that concentrated solutions of ammonium cyanide in water can produce the nucleotide adenine.
• Four independent researchers (Sam Weiss, Jerard Hurwitz, Audrey Stevens and J. Bonner) discover the bacterial RNA polymerase that regulates the polymerization of nucleotides under the control of DNA.^[7]
• Climatron geodesic dome greenhouse opens at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis.^[8]

Computer science

• John McCarthy of MIT publishes the Lisp programming language.^[9]

Exploration

• January 23 - Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh reach bottom in the Mariana Trench in United States Navy bathyscaphe Trieste at a depth of 10,916 m.
• May 10 - The nuclear submarine USS Triton, under the command of Captain Edward L. Beach, Jr., completes the first underwater circumnavigation of the Earth.

Mathematics

• Wacław Sierpiński proves the existence of Sierpinski numbers.
• In the classification of finite simple groups, Michio Suzuki and Rimhak Ree introduce Suzuki–Ree groups;^[10][11] and John G. Thompson, Walter Feit and Marshall Hall prove that a group with a fixed-point-free automorphism of prime order is nilpotent, and that all finite simple CN groups of odd order are cyclic.^[12]

Medicine

• April 15 - William C. Chardack implants the first fixed-rate cardiac pacemaker with mercury battery, designed by Wilson Greatbatch.^[13]
• May 9 - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announces that it will approve birth control as an additional indication for Searle's Enovid, making it the world's first approved combined oral contraceptive pill.
• June 6 - The American Heart Association announces a strong statistical association between heavy cigarette smoking and coronary heart disease.^[14]

Meteorology

• April 1 - The United States launches the first weather satellite, TIROS-1.

Paleontology

• November 4 - OH 7, first fragments of Homo habilis, discovered by Jonathan Leakey at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania.^[15]

Physics

• March 22 - Arthur Leonard Schawlow and Charles Hard Townes receive the first patent for a laser.
• May 16 - Theodore Maiman demonstrates the first working laser, a ruby laser, at Hughes Research Laboratories.

Technology

• A tungsten halogen lamp bulb is patented by General Electric engineer Fredrick Moby.^[16]

Births

• May 3 - Jaron Lanier, American computer scientist.
• October 18 - Craig Mello, American biologist.

Deaths

• May 8 - J. H. C. Whitehead (b. 1904), British mathematician.
• June 17 - Harold Gillies (b. 1882), plastic surgeon.

References