1953 in science

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The year 1953 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

DNA double helix

Biochemistry

• April 25 - Francis Crick and James D. Watson of the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory publish "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid" in the British journal Nature (first announced on February 28 at a Solvay Conference), often ranked as one of the most dramatic results in biology during the 20th century because of the structural beauty and functional logic of the DNA double helix. They will share a 1962 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Maurice Wilkins who publishes x-ray crystallography results for DNA in the same issue of Nature. The third related article published at the same time is by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling on "Molecular Configuration in Sodium Thymonucleate".
• May 15 - Stanley Miller publishes (in Science) results from the "Miller-Urey experiment". These surprise many chemists by showing that organic molecules present in living organisms can form easily from simple chemicals.

Biology

• Gerald Durrell publishes The Overloaded Ark.
• Niko Tinbergen publishes The Herring Gull's World.

Chemistry

• Rudolph Pariser, Robert G. Parr and John Pople publish their computational quantum chemistry theory for approximating molecular orbitals.

Computer science

• There are estimated to be about 100 hand-built computers in the world.^{[citation needed]}
• Tom Kilburn at the University of Manchester completes a device called MEG, which performs floating-point calculations. This machine evolves into the first transistorized computer, the Metro-Vickers MV950, leading to mass production of computers.
• Alan Turing publishes an article describing the first 1,104 zeroes of the Riemann zeta-function, culminating fifteen years of work on how to use computers to tackle a fundamental problem in number theory.

Earth sciences

• Maurice Ewing and Bruce Heezen discover the deep canyon running along the center of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, an important contribution to plate tectonics.

Life sciences

• March 26 - Jonas Salk announces his polio vaccine.
• August 18 - The second Kinsey Report, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, is published in the United States.
• September 4 - The discovery of REM sleep is first published by researchers Eugene Aserinsky and Nathaniel Kleitman of the University of Chicago.
• Cincinnati psychiatrist Max Lurie and Harry Salzer coin the term antidepressant.

Paleontology

• November 21 - Authorities at the Natural History Museum in London announce that the skull of Piltdown Man (discovered in 1912) is a hoax.

Philosophy of science

• Rudolf Carnap publishes an article called "Testability and Meaning" in Readings in the Philosophy of Science which moves away from the philosophical position of Logical positivism with respect to science (particularly the heavily mathematical sciences like physics). Carnap now emphasizes the idea that progress in science depends on the gradual accumulation of many small results that support our understanding of the world, a view more in line with Wittgenstein's later philosophy and biological sciences.
• As part of an extended series of publications on science, Pope Pius XII publishes "The Technician" which instructs scientists to restrict themselves to the study of physical matter and do nothing to undermine the idea of a non-material soul or a Superior Being. "The Technician" is delivered as a papal address on October 9.

Physics

• Spring - Frederick Reines and Clyde Cowan perform the first neutrino detection experiments using the first neutrino detector (cadmium-water target) built by them and with the Hanford Site nuclear facility in Washington as the neutrino source; preliminary results are published in the Summer. This work, first discussed with Enrico Fermi and others in 1951–2, leads to the 1995 Nobel Prize.

Psychology

• Hans Eysenck publishes the book Uses and Abuses of Psychology including a controversial chapter "What is wrong with psychoanalysis".
• B. F. Skinner publishes the book Science and Human Behavior, a still-controversial attempt to apply the results from behavioral studies of laboratory animals to human psychology.

Space technology

• The Jet Propulsion Laboratory completes development of the SSM-A-17 Corporal I rocket. This is the first U.S. surface-to-surface ballistic missile and the motor is liquid fueled with red fuming nitric acid as the oxidizer.

Other events

• February 16 - The Pakistan Academy of Sciences is established.

Births

• May 14 - Martin Page, English botanist.

Deaths

• February 25 - Sergei Winogradsky (born 1856), Russian microbiologist.
• April 17 - Sven Gustaf Wingqvist (born 1876), Swedish engineer, inventor and industrialist.
• April 22 - Jan Czochralski (born 1885), Polish-born discoverer of the Czochralski process for growing crystals.
• August 15 - Ludwig Prandtl (born 1875), German physicist.
• September 28 - Edwin Hubble (born 1889), American astronomer.
• November 13 - Herbert E. Ives (born 1882), American optical engineer.