1959 in science
Encyclopedia
The year 1959 in science
and technology
involved some significant events, listed below.
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
and technology
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
involved some significant events, listed below.
Astronomy and space exploration
- August 7 - The United States launches Explorer 6Explorer 6Explorer 6 was a United States satellite launched on August 7, 1959. It was a small, spheroidal satellite designed to study trapped radiation of various energies, galactic cosmic rays, geomagnetism, radio propagation in the upper atmosphere, and the flux of micrometeorites...
from the Atlantic Missile Range in Cape CanaveralCape CanaveralCape Canaveral, from the Spanish Cabo Cañaveral, is a headland in Brevard County, Florida, United States, near the center of the state's Atlantic coast. Known as Cape Kennedy from 1963 to 1973, it lies east of Merritt Island, separated from it by the Banana River.It is part of a region known as the...
, FloridaFloridaFlorida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
. - September 15 - Russian probe Luna 3Luna 3The Soviet space probe Luna 3 of 1959 was the third space probe to be sent to the neighborhood of the Moon, and this mission was an early feat in the spaceborne exploration of outer space...
sends back first photos of the far side of Earth's MoonMoonThe Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...
. - September 19 - Giuseppe CocconiGiuseppe CocconiGiuseppe Cocconi was a former director of the Proton Synchrotron at CERN in Geneva. He is known for is work in particle physics and for his involvement with SETI.-Life:...
and Philip MorrisonPhilip MorrisonPhilip Morrison, was Institute Professor Emeritus and Professor of Physics Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology .-Early life and education:...
establish the scientific rationale for SETISETIThe search for extraterrestrial intelligence is the collective name for a number of activities people undertake to search for intelligent extraterrestrial life. Some of the most well known projects are run by the SETI Institute. SETI projects use scientific methods to search for intelligent life...
with the publishing of their seminal paper "Searching for Interstellar Communications" in NatureNature (journal)Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
. - November 24 - Yardymli meteorite makes a landfall in AzerbaijanAzerbaijanAzerbaijan , officially the Republic of Azerbaijan is the largest country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to...
. - December 4 - Little Joe 2Little Joe 2The Little Joe 2 was a test of the Mercury space capsule. It was the first American animal spaceflight, carrying the Rhesus monkey Sam close to the edge of space. He was sent to test the space equipment and the adverse effects of space on humans.The flight was launched December 4, 1959, at 11:15...
, a mission in the Mercury programMercury programMercury Program might refer to:*the first successful American manned spaceflight program, Project Mercury*an American post-rock band, The Mercury Program...
, carries Sam the monkey into space. - Coma BerenicidsComa BerenicidsComa Berenicids is a minor meteor shower, originating from the constellation Coma Berenices. The shower appears from December 8 to January 23 with the estimated maximum on December 20—29 . The radiant during that time is at α=165°, δ=+30°...
discovered.
Biology
- January 1 - CultivarCultivarA cultivar'Cultivar has two meanings as explained under Formal definition. When used in reference to a taxon, the word does not apply to an individual plant but to all those plants sharing the unique characteristics that define the cultivar. is a plant or group of plants selected for desirable...
s of plants named after this date must be named in a modern language, not in Latin. - March 26 - Jersey ZooJersey Zoological ParkJersey Zoological Park or Jersey Zoo is a zoological park established in 1959 on the island of Jersey in the English Channel by naturalist and author Gerald Durrell . It is now officially called Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust after its founder, or Durrell for short...
established by Gerald DurrellGerald DurrellGerald "Gerry" Malcolm Durrell, OBE was a naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist, author and television presenter...
. - August 8 - Min Chueh ChangMin Chueh ChangDr. Min Chueh Chang , often credited as M.C. Chang, was a Chinese American reproductive biologist. His specific area of study was the fertilisation process in mammalian reproduction...
reports the first mammals, a litter of rabbits, grown from ovaOvumAn ovum is a haploid female reproductive cell or gamete. Both animals and embryophytes have ova. The term ovule is used for the young ovum of an animal, as well as the plant structure that carries the female gametophyte and egg cell and develops into a seed after fertilization...
having undergone in vitro fertilisationIn vitro fertilisationIn vitro fertilisation is a process by which egg cells are fertilised by sperm outside the body: in vitro. IVF is a major treatment in infertility when other methods of assisted reproductive technology have failed...
and transferred to a surrogate mother.
Computer science
- IBMIBMInternational Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
ship the transistorTransistorA transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify and switch electronic signals and power. It is composed of a semiconductor material with at least three terminals for connection to an external circuit. A voltage or current applied to one pair of the transistor's terminals changes the current...
-based IBM 1401IBM 1401The IBM 1401 was a variable wordlength decimal computer that was announced by IBM on October 5, 1959. The first member of the highly successful IBM 1400 series, it was aimed at replacing electromechanical unit record equipment for processing data stored on punched cards...
mainframe. - December - The specification for the programming languageProgramming languageA programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....
COBOLCOBOLCOBOL is one of the oldest programming languages. Its name is an acronym for COmmon Business-Oriented Language, defining its primary domain in business, finance, and administrative systems for companies and governments....
is completed.
History of science
- Society for the History of TechnologySociety for the History of TechnologyThe Society for the History of Technology, or SHOT, is the primary professional society for historians of technology. Founded in 1958, its flagship publication is the journal Technology and Culture...
begins publication of the journal Technology and CultureTechnology and CultureTechnology and Culture is a quarterly academic journal founded in 1959. It is an official publication of the Society for the History of Technology, whose members routinely refer to it as "T&C." Besides scholarly articles, the journal publishes reviews of books and museum exhibitions. Occasionally,...
.
Medicine
- July - The medical research group studying Minamata diseaseMinamata disease', sometimes referred to as , is a neurological syndrome caused by severe mercury poisoning. Symptoms include ataxia, numbness in the hands and feet, general muscle weakness, narrowing of the field of vision and damage to hearing and speech. In extreme cases, insanity, paralysis, coma, and death...
comes to the conclusion that mercuryMercury (element)Mercury is a chemical element with the symbol Hg and atomic number 80. It is also known as quicksilver or hydrargyrum...
is the cause. - Joseph MurrayJoseph MurrayJoseph Edward Murray is a retired American plastic surgeon. He performed the first successful human kidney transplant on identical twins on December 23, 1954....
performs the world's first successful allotransplantationAllotransplantationAllotransplantation is the transplantation of cells, tissues, or organs, sourced from a genetically non-identical member of the same species as the recipient. The transplant is called an allograft or allogeneic transplant or homograft...
.
Technology
- Agfa introduces the first fully automatic cameraCameraA camera is a device that records and stores images. These images may be still photographs or moving images such as videos or movies. The term camera comes from the camera obscura , an early mechanism for projecting images...
, the Optima. - Eveready Battery engineer Lewis UrryLewis UrryLewis Frederick Urry, , was a Canadian chemical engineer and inventor. He invented both the alkaline battery and lithium battery while working for the Eveready Battery company....
invents the long-lasting alkaline batteryAlkaline batteryAlkaline batteries are a type of primary batteries dependent upon the reaction between zinc and manganese dioxide . A rechargeable alkaline battery allows reuse of specially designed cells....
. - Gordon GouldGordon GouldGordon Gould was an American physicist who is widely, but not universally, credited with the invention of the laser. Gould is best known for his thirty-year fight with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to obtain patents for the laser and related technologies...
publishes the term LaserLaserA laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of photons. The term "laser" originated as an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation...
. - Pilkington Brothers patentPatentA patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
the float glass process.
Events
- May 7 - Scientist and novelist C. P. SnowC. P. SnowCharles Percy Snow, Baron Snow of the City of Leicester CBE was an English physicist and novelist who also served in several important positions with the UK government...
delivers an influential Rede LectureRede LectureThe Sir Robert Rede's Lecturer is an annual appointment to give a public lecture, the Sir Robert Rede's Lecture at the University of Cambridge. It is named for Sir Robert Rede, who was Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in the sixteenth century.-Initial series:The initial series of lectures ranges...
on The Two CulturesThe Two CulturesThe Two Cultures is the title of an influential 1959 Rede Lecture by British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow. Its thesis was that "the intellectual life of the whole of western society" was split into the titular two cultures—namely the sciences and the humanities—and that this was a major...
, concerning a perceived breakdown of communication between the scienceScienceScience is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
s and humanitiesHumanitiesThe humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
, in the Senate House, University of CambridgeSenate House (University of Cambridge)The Senate House of the University of Cambridge is now used mainly for degree ceremonies. It was formerly also used for meetings of the Council of the Senate...
. It is subsequently published as The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.
Awards
- Nobel PrizeNobel PrizeThe Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
s- PhysicsNobel Prize in PhysicsThe Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...
- Emilio Gino Segrè, - Owen ChamberlainOwen ChamberlainOwen Chamberlain was an American physicist, and Nobel laureate in physics for his discovery, with collaborator Emilio Segrè, of antiprotons, a sub-atomic antiparticle.-Biography:... - ChemistryNobel Prize in ChemistryThe Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outstanding contributions in chemistry, physics, literature,...
- Jaroslav HeyrovskýJaroslav HeyrovskýJaroslav Heyrovský was a Czech chemist and inventor. Heyrovský was the inventor of the polarographic method, father of the electroanalytical method, and recipient of the Nobel Prize in 1959... - MedicineNobel Prize in Physiology or MedicineThe Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine administered by the Nobel Foundation, is awarded once a year for outstanding discoveries in the field of life science and medicine. It is one of five Nobel Prizes established in 1895 by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, in his will...
- Severo OchoaSevero OchoaSevero Ochoa de Albornoz was a Spanish-American doctor and biochemist, and joint winner of the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Arthur Kornberg.-Early life:...
, Arthur KornbergArthur KornbergArthur Kornberg was an American biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1959 for his discovery of "the mechanisms in the biological synthesis of deoxyribonucleic acid " together with Dr. Severo Ochoa of New York University...
- Physics
Births
- August 3 - Koichi TanakaKoichi Tanakais a Japanese scientist who shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2002 for developing a novel method for mass spectrometric analyses of biological macromolecules with John Bennett Fenn and Kurt Wuthrich ....
, Japanese chemist (Nobel Prize in ChemistryNobel Prize in ChemistryThe Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outstanding contributions in chemistry, physics, literature,...
2002). - December 25 - Michael P. Anderson (d. 20032003 in scienceThe year 2003 in science and technology involved some significant events.-Anthropology:*March 13 – The journal Nature reports that 350,000-year-old upright-walking human footprints have been found in Italy.-Astronomy:...
), American astronautAstronautAn astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft....
. - Saul PerlmutterSaul PerlmutterSaul Perlmutter is an American astrophysicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of...
, American astrophysicist (Nobel Prize in PhysicsNobel Prize in PhysicsThe Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...
2011).
Deaths
- February 15 - Owen Willans RichardsonOwen Willans RichardsonSir Owen Willans Richardson, FRS was a British physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1928 for his work on thermionic emission, which led to Richardson's Law.-Biography:...
(b. 18791879 in scienceThe year 1879 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Biology:* Jean Henri Fabre publishes the first of his Souvenirs entomologiques....
), BritishUnited KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
physicistPhysicistA physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
, Nobel Prize for Physics 19281928 in scienceThe year 1928 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Biology:* January - Frederick Griffith reports the results of Griffith's experiment, indirectly proving the existence of DNA.... - June 9 - Adolf Windaus (b. 18761876 in scienceThe year 1876 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Biology:* Robert Koch demonstrates that Bacillus anthracis is the source of of anthrax, the first bacterium conclusively shown to cause disease.-Medicine:...
) German chemistChemistA chemist is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties such as density and acidity. Chemists carefully describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms...
, Nobel Prize in ChemistryNobel Prize in ChemistryThe Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outstanding contributions in chemistry, physics, literature,...
1928 - September 30 - Ross Granville HarrisonRoss Granville HarrisonRoss Granville Harrison was an American biologist and anatomist credited as the first to work successfully with artificial tissue culture....
(b. 18701870 in scienceThe year 1870 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.-Biology:* January 18 - Gerhardt Krefft first describes the Queensland lungfish, in The Sydney Morning Herald....
), AmericanUnited StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
physiologist