1984 in science
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The year 1984 in science and technology involved some significant events.
Astronomy and space exploration
- February 7 – Astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart make the first untethered space walk.
- The National Radio Astronomy Observatory in the United States converts the 36-foot radio telescope on Kitt Peak (originally built in 1967) to the ARO 12m Radio Telescope.
Biology
- First known case of Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, in England.[1]
- The enzyme telomerase is discovered by Carol W. Greider and Elizabeth Blackburn in the ciliate Tetrahymena.[2]
Chemistry and Physics
- Peter Kramer[3] and Dan Shechtman[4] publish their discoveries of what will soon afterwards be named quasicrystals.[5]
Computer science
- January 24 – Apple Computer place the Macintosh personal computer on sale in the United States. It will be the first successful PC to use a graphical user interface.
- June 6 – The Tetris tile-matching video game, designed by Alexey Pajitnov, is launched in the Soviet Union.[6]
History of science
- Robert Gwyn Macfarlane publishes Alexander Fleming: The Man and the Myth.
Physiology and medicine
- February 3 – Dr. John Buster and the research team at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center announce history's first embryo transfer from one woman to another resulting in a live birth.
- April 22 – Dr. Robert Gallo and Margaret Heckler of United States Public Health Service announce the discovery of HTLV-III as the virus that causes AIDS.
Technology
- July 21 – In Jackson, Michigan, a factory robot crushes a worker against a safety bar in apparently the first robot-related death in the United States.
Awards
- Nobel Prizes
- Physics – Carlo Rubbia, Simon van der Meer
- Chemistry – Robert Bruce Merrifield
- Medicine – Niels K. Jerne, Georges J. F. Köhler, César Milstein
- Turing Award – Niklaus Wirth
Deaths
- February 21 – Anna Baetjer (b. 1899), American toxicologist.
- May 13 – Stanislaw Ulam (b. 1909), Polish American mathematician.
- May 24 – Sir Stanley Hooker (b. 1907), English aeronautical engineer.
- August 11 – George Streisinger (b. 1927), Hungarian American molecular biologist, the first person to clone a vertebrate.
- October 20 – Paul Dirac (b. 1902), English-born physicist.
- December 20 – Stanley Milgram (b. 1933), American social psychologist.
References
- ↑ Brown, David (2001-06-19). "The 'recipe for disaster' that killed 80 and left a £5bn bill". The Daily Telegraph (London). Retrieved 2014-12-02.
- ↑ Greider, Carol W.; Blackburn, Elizabeth H. (December 1985). "Identification of a Specific Telomere Terminal Transferase Activity in Tetrahymena Extracts". Cell 43 (2:1): 405–13. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(85)90170-9. PMID 3907856. Retrieved 2011-07-29.
- ↑ Kramer, P.; Neri, R. (1984). "On periodic and non-periodic space fillings of Em obtained by projection". Acta Crystallographica A40 (5): 580. doi:10.1107/S0108767384001203.
- ↑ Shechtman, D.; Blech, I.; Gratias, D.; Cahn, J. (1984). "Metallic Phase with Long-Range Orientational Order and No Translational Symmetry". Physical Review Letters 53 (20): 1951–4. Bibcode:1984PhRvL..53.1951S. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.53.1951. Retrieved 2011-10-05.
- ↑ Levine, Dov; Steinhardt, Paul Joseph (1984). "Quasicrystals: A New Class of Ordered Structures". Physical Review Letters 53 (26): 2477–80. Bibcode:1984PhRvL..53.2477L. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.53.2477. Retrieved 2011-10-05.
- ↑ Paul, Franklin (2009-06-02). "At 25, Tetris still eyeing growth". Reuters. Retrieved 2014-12-02.