1951 in science

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The year 1951 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Biology

• Niko Tinbergen publishes The Study of Instinct.

Computer science

• February - Ferranti deliver their first Mark 1 computer to the University of Manchester (UK). It is the world's first commercially-available general-purpose electronic computer.
• March 30 - Remington Rand delivers the first UNIVAC I computer to the United States Census Bureau. It is inaugurated on June 14.
• May 5 - The Ferranti NIMROD computer is presented at the Science Museum (London) during the Festival of Britain. It is designed exclusively to play Nim, using panels of lights, the first instance of a digital computer designed specifically for such a purpose.
• November 29 - LEO becomes the first computer to run a full commercial business application, for the British bakers J. Lyons and Co.
• EDVAC binary electronic stored program computer incorporating high speed delay line memory begins operation at the United States Army's Ballistics Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground.

Physics

• Edward Teller and Stanisław Ulam, working for the United States, develop the first thermonuclear bomb.

Psychology

• Solomon Asch begins publication of his conformity experiments showing how group pressure can persuade an individual to conform to an obviously wrong opinion.

Technology

• July 5 - William Shockley invents the junction transistor.

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics - John Douglas Cockcroft, Ernest Thomas Sinton Walton
  • Chemistry - Edwin Mattison McMillan; Glenn Theodore Seaborg
  • Medicine - Max Theiler
• Copley Medal: David Keilin
• Wollaston Medal for Geology - Olaf Holtedahl

Births

• July 1 - Niels Krabbe, Danish ornithologist.
• September 18 - John Clark (d. 2004), English molecular biologist.
• September 30 - Barry Marshall, Australian physician, Nobel prize for Physiology or Medicine 2005

Deaths

• April 6 - Robert Broom (b. 1866), paleontologist
• April 22 - Horace Donisthorpe (b. 1870), British entomologist
• October 4 - Henrietta Lacks (b. 1921), source of the HeLa cell line