1957 in science

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The year 1957 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Astronomy and space exploration

Sputnik 1

• October 4 - Launch of Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite.
• November 3 - Launch of Sputnik 2, with a dog called Laika on board, the first animal sent into orbit. There is no technology available to return it to earth.
• December 6 - United States attempts launch of Vanguard TV3 which fails after just two seconds in the air.
• Project Orion begins, a U.S. program to build a spacecraft powered by nuclear explosions.
• Wilhelm Gliese publishes the first Gliese Catalogue of Nearby Stars.

Biology

• Structure of myoglobin determined by x-ray crystallography

Computer science

• April - IBM delivers the first compiler for the FORTRAN scientific programming language. It becomes the most widely used computer language for technical work.
• Robert C. Prim independently rediscovers Prim's algorithm. It was first discovered in 1930 by Vojtěch Jarník and independently rediscovered again by Edsger Dijkstra in 1959.

Exploration

• Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station established.

Medicine

• June 27 - A report by the Medical Research Council (UK) reveals evidence to support a link between tobacco smoking and lung cancer.
• October 1 - The drug Thalidomide is launched as a sedative by Grünenthal GmbH.

Physics

• BCS theory of superconductivity developed by John Bardeen, Leon Cooper, and Robert Schrieffer.
• B²FH, an astrophysics paper by the British astronomers Geoffrey Burbidge, Margaret Burbidge and Fred Hoyle and the American astronomer William Fowler, describes the synnthesis of the lightest elements through nuclear processes in stars.
• Rudolf Mössbauer discovers the Mössbauer effect.
• University of Liverpool cyclotron produces violation of charge conjugation symmetry.
• August - ZETA fusion reactor begins operation at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, Harwell, Oxfordshire.

Psychology

• Harry Harlow begins maternal-separation and social isolation experiments on rhesus monkeys.

Technology

• December 2 - Reactor goes critical in Shippingport Atomic Power Station, Pennsylvania, the first commercial pressurized water reactor.
• First working prototype Wankel engine.

Events

• First Conference on Science and World Affairs held at Pugwash, Nova Scotia, organized by Joseph Rotblat.

Awards

• Nobel Prizes:
  • Physics - Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee
  • Chemistry- Lord Alexander R Todd
  • Medicine - Daniel Bovet

Births

• July 12 - Rick D. Husband (d. 2003), American astronaut.
• October 21 - Wolfgang Ketterle, German winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics (2001).
• December 29 - Bruce Beutler, American winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (2011).

Deaths

• February 8
  • John von Neumann (b. 1903), mathematician.
  • Walther Bothe (b. 1891), physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics 1954.
• February 18 - Henry Norris Russell (b. 1877), astronomer.
• May 7 - Wilhelm Filchner (b. 1877), explorer.
• July 3 - Frederick Lindemann, 1st Viscount Cherwell (b. 1886), physicist.
• August 16 - Irving Langmuir (b. 1881), chemist and physicist, Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1932.
• August 21 - Harald Ulrik Sverdrup (b. 1888), meteorologist and oceanographer.
• October 26 - Gerty Cori (b. 1896), biochemist, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1947.
• November 3 - Wilhelm Reich (b. 1897), psychoanalyst.