1954 in science
| |||
---|---|---|---|
+... |
1954 in science |
---|
Fields |
Technology |
|
Social sciences |
Paleontology |
Extraterrestrial environment |
Terrestrial environment |
Other/related |
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]
- Heinz Sielmann makes the pioneering nature documentary about woodpeckers, Zimmerleute des Waldes ("Carpenters of the forest").
- 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]
- Strychnine total synthesis is first achieved in the laboratory by Robert Burns Woodward's team at Harvard.[7][8][9][10]
- The Wittig reaction is discovered by German chemist Georg Wittig.
Computer science
- January – The TRADIC Phase One computer is completed at Bell Labs in the United States, a candidate to be regarded as the first transistor computer.[11]
- 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.[12]
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
- January 6 – The Luhn algorithm, devised by IBM information scientist Hans Peter Luhn, is described in a United States patent.[13]
- Klaus Roth publishes a paper[14] laying the foundations for modern discrepancy theory.
- 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.
- August 10 – British epidemiologist Richard Doll submits a study on the risk to workers in asbestos manufacture of mortality from lung cancer.[15]
- The first organ transplantsare done in Boston and Paris.
- December 23 –
- The first of the anti-psychotic phenothiazine drugs, Chlorpromazine, starts being sold under the trade names Thorazine (U.S.) and Largactil (U.K.)
- The
Metrology
- 10th General Conference on Weights and Measures proposes the six original SI base units.
- Alexander Macmillan publishes the "Macmillan correction" to account for errors in the calculation of velocity of an object moving along a gradient due to viscous effects and wall proximity.
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.[19]
- March 1 – Castle Bravo: United States carries out a thermonuclear weapon test on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
- September 29 – CERN is founded by twelve European states.[20]
Psychology
- Summer – Robbers Cave Experiment carried out by Muzafer and Carolyn Sherif.[21]
- 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.[22]
- June 29 – Buckminster Fuller is granted a United States patent for his development of the geodesic dome.[23]
- September 30 – The submarine USS Nautilus (SSN-571), the first atomic-powered vessel, is commissioned by the United States Navy.
- October 18 – Texas Instruments announces development of the first commercial transistor radio, the Regency TR-1, manufactured in Indianapolis; it goes on sale the following month.
- December 16 – The first synthetic diamond is produced.[24]
- New Zealand engineer Sir William Hamilton develops the first pump-jet engine (the "Hamilton Jet") capable of propelling a jetboat.[25]
- The first electric drip brew coffeemaker is patented in Germany and named the Wigomat after its inventor Gottlob Widmann.[26]
- Staley T. McBrayer invents the Vanguard web offset press for newspaper printing in Fort Worth, Texas.[27]
- The Angle grinder is invented by German company Ackermann + Schmitt (Flex-Elektrowerkzeuge).
Awards
- Fields Prize in Mathematics: Kunihiko Kodaira and Jean-Pierre Serre, the latter being the youngest-ever winner, at age 27
- Nobel Prizes
Births
- January 16 – Morten P. Meldal, Danish Nobel Chemistry laureate, 2022.[28]
- February 9 – Kevin Warwick, English scientist, author of March of the Machines.
- March – Clare Marx, English surgeon.
- May 14 – Peter J. Ratcliffe, English cellular biologist, Nobel Medicine laureate, 2019.
- June 20 – Ilan Ramon (died 2003), Israeli astronaut.
- July 11 – materials engineer.
- July 17 – physical chemist and Chancellor.
- August 28 – .
- September 5 – Myeong-Hee Yu, South Korean microbiologist.
- November 1 – epidemiologist.
- November 7 – molecular biologist.
- Pat Hanrahan, American computer scientist.
- entomologist.
- Huda Zoghbi, Lebanese-born geneticist.
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 1897), American mathematician and logician.
- June 7 – Alan Turing (born 1912), English mathematician and computer scientist (probable suicide).[29]
- July 11 – naturopathic medicine.
- October 3 – Vera Gaze (born 1899), Soviet Russian astronomer.
- October 8 – Dimitrie Pompeiu (born 1873), Romanian mathematician.
- November 29 – Italian American physicist.
References
- ^ Dement'yev and Rustamov (1985). The Red Data Book of Turkmenistan. Ashgabat: Turkmenistan Publishing House.
- S2CID 2462316.
- ^ 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.
- ISBN 0-674-00460-4.
- S2CID 4207158.
- PMID 7757003.
- ISBN 978-3-527-29231-8.
- Angewandte Chemie International Edition. 39 (1): 44–122.)
{{cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - PMID 11777429.
- PMID 23597302.
- . Retrieved June 7, 2009.
- ^ "Benstonite". Mindat. Retrieved December 31, 2012.
- ^ No. 2,950,048.
- MR 0066435.
- PMID 8329311.
- The Huffington Post. December 29, 2010. Retrieved March 15, 2011.
- S2CID 41384989.
- ISBN 978-3728123626.
- S2CID 4275331.
- ^ "1954: foundations for European science". CERN. 2008. Retrieved February 28, 2011.
- ^ Sherif, M.; Harvey, O. J.; White, B. J.; Hood, W.; Sherif, C. W. (1961). Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment. Norman, Oklahoma: University Book Exchange.
- ^ "Nuclear Power in Russia". World Nuclear Association. December 2011. Archived from the original on February 13, 2013. Retrieved December 16, 2011.
- ^ U.S. patent 2,682,235.
- S2CID 4266566. Archived from the original(PDF) on January 8, 2014.
- ^ "Sir William Hamilton OBE". HamiltonJet. 2007. Retrieved November 12, 2012.
- ^ "Sixty years of the Federal Republic of Germany – a retrospective of everyday life". Archived from the original on February 25, 2021. Retrieved December 28, 2002.
- ^ "Staley McBrayer, 92; Inventor of Offset Press for Newspaper Printing". Los Angeles Times. April 18, 2002. Retrieved October 19, 2017.
- ^ "Press release: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2022" (Press release). The Nobel Prize. October 5, 2022. Retrieved October 6, 2022.
- ^ "Alan Turing | Biography, Facts, & Education". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved February 14, 2020.