1954 in science
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The year 1954 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Astronomy
- November 30 – In Sylacauga, Alabama, an 8.5 pound sulfide meteorite crashes through a roof and hits Mrs. Elizabeth Hodges in her living room after bouncing off her radio, giving her a bad bruise; the first known modern case of a human being hit by a space rock.
Biology
- January 10 – Last confirmed specimen of a Caspian Tiger is killed, in the valley of the Sumbar River in the Kopet Dag Mountains of Turkmenistan.[1]
- Daniel I. Arnon demonstrates in the laboratory the chemical function of photosynthesis in chloroplasts.[2][3]
- Eduard Paul Tratz and Heinz Heck propose the species name Bonobo for what was previously known as the pygmy chimpanzee.[4]
Chemistry
- Publication of the first analysis of the three-dimensional molecular structure of vitamin B12 by a group including Dorothy Hodgkin, and utilising computer analysis provided by Kenneth Nyitray Trueblood.[5][6]
Computer science
- January 7 – Georgetown-IBM experiment: the first public demonstration of a machine translation system held in New York at the head office of IBM.
Geology
- December 31 – The first specimens of the mineral benstonite are collected by Orlando J. Benston in the Magnet Cove igneous complex of Arkansas.[7]
History of science
- Joseph Needham begins publication of Science and Civilisation in China (Cambridge University Press).
- A History of Technology, edited by Charles Singer, E. J. Holmyard and A. R. Hall, begins publication (Oxford University Press).
Mathematics
- Leonard Jimmie Savage publishes Foundations of Statistics, promoting Bayesian statistics.
Medicine
- February 23 – The first mass vaccination of children against polio begins, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
- The first organ transplants are done in Boston and Paris.
- December 23 – Joseph Murray at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston carries out the first successful kidney transplant, between identical twins.[8]
- The first of the anti-psychotic phenothiazine drugs, Chlorpromazine, starts being sold under the trade names Thorazine (U.S.) and Largactil (U.K.)
- The sucrose gap is introduced by Robert Stämpfli for the reliable measurement of action potential in nerve fibers.[9][10]
Metrology
- 10th General Conference on Weights and Measures proposes the six original SI base units.
Physics
- January 2 – Harold Hopkins and Narinder Singh Kapany at Imperial College London report achieving low-loss light transmission through a 75 cm long optical fiber bundle.[11]
- March 1 – United States carries out a hydrogen bomb test on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
- September 29 – CERN is founded by twelve European states.[12]
Psychology
- Man Meets Dog is published by Konrad Lorenz.
Technology
- June 26 – Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant, the first civilian nuclear power station, is commissioned in the Soviet Union.[13]
- June 29 – Buckminster Fuller is granted a United States patent for his development of the geodesic dome.[14]
- September 30 – The submarine USS Nautilus (SSN-571), the first atomic-powered vessel, is commissioned by the United States Navy
- New Zealand engineer Sir William Hamilton develops the first pump-jet engine (the "Hamilton Jet") capable of propelling a jetboat.[15]
- The first electric drip brew coffeemaker is patented in Germany and named the Wigomat after its inventor Gottlob Widmann.[16]
Awards
- Fields Prize in Mathematics: Kunihiko Kodaira and Jean-Pierre Serre, the latter being the youngest-ever winner, at age 27
- Nobel Prizes
- Physics – Max Born and Walther Bothe
- Chemistry – Linus Pauling
- Medicine – John Franklin Enders, Thomas Huckle Weller and Frederick Chapman Robbins
Births
- February 9 - Kevin Warwick, British scientist, author of March of the Machines.
- June 20 – Ilan Ramon (died 2003), Israeli astronaut.
- July 17 – Angela Kasner, German physical chemist and Chancellor.
- August 28 – George M. Church, American geneticist, molecular engineer and chemist.
Deaths
- January 17 – Leonard Eugene Dickson (born 1874), American mathematician.
- March 7
- Otto Diels (born 1876), German Nobel Chemistry laureate, 1950.
- Ludwik Hirszfeld (born 1884), Polish microbiologist and serologist.
- April 10 – Auguste Lumière (born 1862), French inventor, film pioneer.
- April 21 – Emil Post (born February 11, 1897), American mathematician and logician
- June 7 – Alan Turing (born 1912), English mathematician and computer scientist (probable suicide).
- July 11 – Henry Valentine Knaggs (born 1859), English practitioner of naturopathic medicine.
- November 29 – Enrico Fermi (born 1901), Italian American physicist.
References
- ↑ Dement'yev and Rustamov (1985). The Red Data Book of Turkmenistan. Ashgabat: Turkmenistan Publishing House.
- ↑ Arnon, Daniel I.; Allen, Mary B.; Whatley, F. R. (1954). "Photosynthesis by Isolated Chloroplasts". Nature 174 (4426): 394–6. Bibcode:1954Natur.174..394A. doi:10.1038/174394a0.
- ↑ Laurence, William L. (December 30, 1954). "Sun is Harnessed to Create Food: Science Team on the Coast Duplicates Photosynthesis Outside Plants' Cells". The New York Times. Retrieved July 18, 2010.
- ↑ de Waal, Frans B. M., ed. (2002). Tree of Origin: What Primate Behavior Can Tell Us About Human Social Evolution. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. p. 51. ISBN 0-674-00460-4.
- ↑ Brink, Clara; Hodgkin, Dorothy Crowfoot; Lindsey, June; Pickworth, Jenny; Robertson, John H.; White, John G. (December 25, 1954). "X-ray Crystallographic Evidence on the Structure of Vitamin B12". Nature 174 (4443): 1169–117. Bibcode:1954Natur.174.1169B. doi:10.1038/1741169a0. PMID 13223773. Retrieved January 13, 2012.
- ↑ Glusker, Jenny P. (1994). "Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (1910–1994)". Protein Science 3: 2465–2469. doi:10.1002/pro.5560031233. PMC 2142778. PMID 7757003. Retrieved January 13, 2012.
- ↑ "Benstonite". Mindat. Retrieved 2012-12-31.
- ↑ "Donor Of First Successful Organ Transplant Dies 56 Years Later". The Huffington Post. December 29, 2010. Retrieved March 15, 2011.
- ↑ Stämpfli, R. (1954). "A new method for measuring membrane potentials with external electrodes". Experientia 10 (12): 508–509. doi:10.1007/BF02166189. PMID 14353097.
- ↑ Akert, K. (August 1996). Swiss Contributions to the Neurosciences in Four Hundred Years: From the Renaissance to the Present. Verlag der Fachvereine Hochschulverlag AG an der ETH Zurich. ISBN 978-3728123626.
- ↑ Hopkins, H. H.; Kapany, N. S. (1954). "A flexible fibrescope, using static scanning". Nature 173 (4392): 39. Bibcode:1954Natur.173...39H. doi:10.1038/173039b0.
- ↑ "1954: foundations for European science". CERN. 2008. Retrieved February 28, 2011.
- ↑ "Nuclear Power in Russia". World Nuclear Association. December 2011. Retrieved 2011-12-16.
- ↑ U.S. patent 2,682,235
- ↑ "Sir William Hamilton OBE". HamiltonJet. 2007. Retrieved 2012-11-12.
- ↑ "Sixty years of the Federal Republic of Germany – a retrospective of everyday life". Retrieved 2002-12-28.