1961 in science
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The year 1961 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Contents |
[edit] Astronomy and space exploration
- January 31 - Ham, a 37-pound male chimpanzee, is rocketed into space in a test of the Project Mercury capsule designed to carry U.S. astronauts into space.
- April 12 - Yuri Gagarin is the first human in space.
- April 15 - R. N. Schwartz and Charles Hard Townes publish "Interstellar and Interplanetary Communication by Optical Masers" in Nature, providing a basis for Optical SETI.
- May 19 - Venera program: Venera 1 becomes the first manmade object to fly-by another planet by passing Venus (however the probe had lost contact with earth a month earlier and did not send back any data).
- May 25 - Apollo program: President Kennedy announces before a special joint session of Congress his goal to initiate a project to put a "man on the moon" before the end of the decade.
- The first quasar is discovered by Allan Sandage at Mt Palomar, California.
[edit] Chemistry
- Leonard Ornstein first describes disc electrophoresis.[1][2]
[edit] Geophysics
- Francis Birch establishes Birch's law on compressional wave velocities.[3][4]
[edit] Mathematics
- Stephen Smale proves the Poincaré conjecture in dimensions greater than 4.[5]
[edit] Medicine
- Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is first discovered, in the United Kingdom.
- Thalidomide is withdrawn from sale.
[edit] Physics
- February 14 - Discovery of the chemical elements: Element 103, Lawrencium, is first synthesized at Berkeley, California.
- Spain joins CERN; Yugoslavia leaves.
[edit] Psychology
- July - First Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures.
[edit] Zoology
- November 9 - First edition of new International Code of Zoological Nomenclature Code published.
[edit] Awards
[edit] Births
- March 10 - Laurel Clark (died 2003), American astronaut.
- July 1 - Kalpana Chawla (died 2003), Indian astronaut.
- September 23 - William C. McCool (died 2003), American astronaut.
[edit] Deaths
- January 4 - Erwin Schrödinger (born 1887), Austrian physicist.
- June 6 - Carl Jung (born 1875), Swiss psychiatrist.
[edit] References
- ^ "Disc Electrophoresis". http://www.pipeline.com/~lenornst/DiscElectrophoresis.html. Retrieved 2011-10-16.
- ^ Ornstein, Leonard (1964). "Disc Electrophoresis". Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 121: 321–349. doi:10.1111/j.1749-6632.1964.tb14207.x. PMID 14240533.
- ^ Birch, Francis (1961). "The velocity of compressional waves in rocks to 10 kilobars. Part 2". Journal of Geophysical Research 66: 2199–2224. Bibcode 1961JGR....66.2199B. doi:10.1029/JZ066i007p02199. http://www.agu.org/journals/jz/v066/i007/JZ066i007p02199/JZ066i007p02199.pdf.
- ^ Birch, Francis (1961). "Composition of the Earth's mantle". Geophysical Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 4: 295–311. Bibcode 1961GeoJI...4..295B. doi:10.1111/j.1365-246X.1961.tb06821.x.
- ^ Crilly, Tony (2007). 50 Mathematical Ideas you really need to know. London: Quercus. p. 93. ISBN 978-1-84724-008-8.
