1979 in science

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The year 1979 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

[edit] Astronomy and space exploration

February 7 – Pluto enters a 20-year period inside the orbit of Neptune for the first time in 230 years.
March 7 – The largest Magnetar (Soft gamma repeater) event is recorded.
September 1 – The American Pioneer 11 becomes the first spacecraft to visit Saturn when it passes the planet at a distance of 21,000 km.
Amateur Achievement Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific given for the first time.

VisiCalc becomes the first spreadsheet program.
The US Federal Government releases the initial, draft version of Ada (programming language), a strongly typed, comb-structured language with exception handlers, for embedded systems.

'Monstrous moonshine': John Conway and Simon P. Norton prove there is a connection between the Monster group M and the j-function in number theory.^[1]

June 12 – Human-powered aircraft Gossamer Albatross, built by an American team led by Paul MacCready and piloted by Bryan Allen, makes a successful crossing of the English Channel to win the second Kremer prize.

^ "Monstrous Moonshine". Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society 11: 308–339. 1979.
^ "Smallpox". WHO Factsheet. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/smallpox/en/. Retrieved 2007-09-22.